‘I was to change the subject so that these guys wouldn’t think I was implying that they enjoyed taking it up the arse,’ I told Jago to see how he’d react.
Until I’d met Dollar, I wasn’t sure if the men suspected that I might be stabane, queer. But not him. He’d risen to the rank of colonel, wilfully never progressing any higher, because he noticed things that the others might miss.
I resumed the interview, and Dollar began thumping his sternum to mimic the sound of sex. He spoke Xhosa as my translated subtitles appeared below his face: ‘Like this! Like this!’
‘Are you still a member of your gang now that you’re outside prison?’ I asked over the noise.
‘Stop this,’ Jago said.
‘Watch,’ I insisted.
We heard me repeat: ‘Are you still a member—’
‘No,’ Dollar said, ‘only inside. I only do that inside. But if’ – he fumbled his words – ‘but if I go back then I’m 28. Always 28. And I do what the 28 colonel can do.’
‘So you remain a colonel in prison? And if you’re sent to a different place, to a jail you’ve never been to before, how would you introduce yourself to the local 28s so they’d know you’re a real colonel?’
‘Listen to what he says here,’ I said to Jago as Dollar began describing his gold-buttoned tunic, the black collar edged with gold, the black cuffs, the white helmet with the number 28 printed on its badge and a sword that he’d not previously told me about.
‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘That’s what my documentary’s about.’
Dollar lifted his head, as if in response to me talking to Jago, so that his chin pointed at the two of us.
‘What’s he doing?’ Jago said.
‘Preparing to spit.’
‘Where were you born?’ I said.
‘Soweto.’ His voice was strained.
‘You grew up in Soweto?’
‘You?’ Dollar said. ‘Eldorado Park? Mitchells Plain? Do you have a wife? Do you want to be my wife?’
Dollar’s spit drenched the screen. I’d every intention of playing Jago the out-take of Dollar stripping naked, but stopped myself. As much as I feared the ex-con, I felt protective towards him. The prospect of him exposing his genitals to Jago brought with it an unexpected shame. Instead I would show Jago the close-ups of Dollar’s tattoos, and the sequence where his hands circled his neck.
I’d boosted the audio levels so that the softest sounds were now perceptible, an ambient noise like shushing tyres on a road. It needed to be loud to decipher Dollar’s whispers. ‘I hold her throat,’ he said. ‘She can’t breathe. I push her neck.’
‘Why do you show me this?’ Jago said. ‘This is disgusting.’
He fucked me soon thereafter. I watched the distant traffic through the gap in the curtains. Transcontinental trucks racing effortlessly to deliver their cargo.
Jago’s friend Eugen, who’d booked our accommodation, joined us for dinner on Saturday evening at the ‘spaceship’ restaurant. Although I hadn’t expected Jago to disclose that we’d spent most of our weekend in bed, I was disheartened to hear him call me his ‘Lüderitz friend’ instead of something more meaningful. Even ‘friend’, by itself, would have felt less distancing.
Eugen was polite and did his best to include me in their conversation but Jago kept switching over to German. I could get the gist of what they were saying when they spoke slowly, but I didn’t feel confident enough to join in. Before long they barely glanced at me, which brought back memories of standing in front of the ambassador’s wife hoping that Jago would acknowledge my presence.
On the first night I met him, after our swim at Shark Island, he’d told me in his rental car how he yearned for a boyfriend … but the physical manifestation of a possible candidate – at least when it came to me – wasn’t what he was looking for.
‘Africa is the opposite of Europe,’ he said in English for my benefit. He’d steered their conversation to his favourite topic: foreign aid. ‘Everything here is complicated. Every solution, no matter how simple, has consequences you cannot even think of.’
‘More complicated than Germany?’ Eugen said.
This prompted Jago to recount his story about breast milk that I’d heard twice before. Some time ago a French charity ordered its medical staff to advise pregnant HIV-positive mothers in KwaZulu-Natal not to breast-feed their children or else they might risk passing on the virus. At the time this approach made sense because, according to the charity, experts believed that these mothers, who generally gave birth to HIV-negative babies, were putting their infants at risk of contamination from breast milk.
‘So this directive comes down the pipe from Paris,’ Jago said. ‘“Don’t breast-feed your baby or you will kill your child.” What do you think happens?’
Eugen was wary of answering.
‘If you’re a mother in Paris then this is good advice,’ Jago said. ‘But if you live somewhere with no clean water, what do you feed your baby if the aid worker tells you your breast milk is poison? The bureaucrats don’t think, “Where can this mother buy Western baby formula in the bush?” Or how does she afford it? Never mind the question, “Is baby formula healthier for babies … or company profits?” But of course, as you can imagine, the local mothers are stupid enough to believe the Europeans, and their babies starve. That is how life is more complicated in Africa.’
‘You can’t blame the mothers,’ I said.
‘What?’ Jago said.
‘Don’t blame the mothers. If aid workers tell them that breast-feeding kills, and everyone around the mother is either dead or dying, what do you expect them to do?’
‘Ja, I see that,’ Eugen said.
‘No, you misunderstand,’ Jago said, reverting to frustrated German, so I was forced to eavesdrop. ‘I’m trying to show how complicated this continent is. The charity’s advice is perfect for African mothers living in towns. Those mothers have access to fresh water and can afford milk formula, so they must not breast-feed. The same advice that kills rural babies saves the lives of urban babies.’
‘I understand that, Jago,’ I said in English, unable to mask my irritation, ‘but none of this is the mothers’ fault.’
Jago said, ‘All I was saying is that the person in Paris who dreamed up the ruling never realised that water is the main problem. For that bureaucrat the problem was the virus in breast milk. Because in Europe water is always in a tap. But Africa is always more complicated.’
We returned to our room in silence.
‘Do you even like Namibia?’ I said as we undressed for bed.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because you don’t behave as if you do.’ I avoided asking if I embarrassed him, or suggesting that he might be as complicated as the Africans he kept moaning about.
‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I wish I’d taken you to a better game reserve instead of this shitty place. Etosha Pan! Now that’s a beautiful park.’
Only later, when we were in bed together with the bathroom light on, did he apologise. He caressed me and said he loved having me all to himself. I wasn’t feeling particularly horny, but I allowed him to push himself into me as he told me everything he was about to do to me. For my own part, I was anxious for him to hold me, as he’d done under his warm towel the other night at the pool. I longed for the Jago who’d clung to me on Shark Island, but all he gave me was his sweaty, puzzled face working above me. His chest rubbing mine. His shaved hair stinging like needles. I grasped his hips to encourage him to push even deeper inside me, his veins thickening on his neck, as I recalled Dollar’s smell and Dollar’s rough hands.
When at last I disentangled myself from Jago’s wet grasp, I fell into a disturbed sleep. I kept waking, paranoid that I’d included incriminating evidence in the interviews I’d sent Chesley. I eventually went to review the files, but couldn’t find any problems.
Careful not to rouse Jago, I found a torch in the cupboard and wandered out into the cold evening air. The batteries w
ere almost dead so the moon lit my way, and I managed to navigate without treading on a snake or otherwise disturbing a wild animal.
Happy to be in the water, I swam as many lengths as I could manage. But I was unfit, I kept having to catch my breath. As I stood in the middle of the pool, determined to push on, I fought the urge to cry. It was only by ignoring this impulse that I lost myself in my strokes. Ten lengths became twenty, thirty, forty.
Exhausted and hungry, I waited for the restaurant to open so that I could eat something sweet.
Jago was sitting up in bed playing on his phone when I let myself back into our room.
‘I had a bad dream,’ I said, ‘so I went for a swim.’
‘You’ve eaten?’
‘Only some jam on toast. I was starving. I’m ready to go back with you.’
I caught the fire in his eyes. Without a word he pulled on his clothes and left me standing there.
He wouldn’t talk to me when he returned. Instead he made phone calls, even though it was Sunday morning, going outside to speak. He might have intended me to hear his words to the unhappy souls on the other end of the line: There is nothing in this country! Nothing!
‘So do you want to find those black rhinos?’ he said when he came in. ‘It’s a bit of a waste to visit and not look for any game.’
‘No, I’ve packed. My flight takes off at six, but I’m ready to leave when you are.’
His nostrils flared.
I said, ‘Why the hell don’t you just move back to Berlin?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re always whingeing how shit Africa is. If Germany’s so great, why don’t you go back?’
He wouldn’t respond.
‘I’m willing to give up everything, Jago, but not this way.’
The stereo filled the silence between us all the way to Windhoek International.
He helped me unload my bag outside Departures, avoiding my gaze. After he’d slammed his car boot shut, I said, ‘Do I complicate your life?’
‘What?’
‘Am I too complicated for you?’
‘Why do you say that? What do you mean?’
‘The way you ignore me in front of people.’
‘Are we still talking about that? I’ve known Eugen for a long time. I have a professional relationship with him.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Jago, he’s a fucking food and beverage manager. Not that it matters, but he’s probably bi or gay himself. It was the same at the ambassador’s party. Don’t you see it?’
He went to fetch a baggage cart in lieu of replying, polite and patient with the tourists flying home. This airport would never be my gateway to Europe.
I heaved my suitcase onto the trolley and took control of the cart’s reverse-brake handle before he could. I didn’t need him wheeling it into the terminal on my behalf.
‘I’m prepared to give up my life in Lüderitz for you,’ I said, ‘but I’m not prepared to be your Lüderitz friend. And if I go out for a morning swim, and I happen to eat a slice of toast because I’m starving, I don’t expect you to treat me like a naughty child. You need to grow up.’
Neither of us said goodbye.
Sudden drops and recoveries interrupted my plane’s steep climb. The craft fought the hot desert air folding into the cold sea breeze. Only after turbulence no longer threatened us did the pilot announce that we’d reached cruising altitude, and I waited for the attendant with his rattling bottles. I was glad to have told Jago how I felt, even though it wasn’t how I wanted to leave things with him. Everything about my visit felt unsatisfactory. I would have to send Mitch Danker all my files, that much was clear, and he’d review them. A certain fate awaited me.
The dying sun lit the abundant ocean on my right as the land darkened beneath me. The wet horizon cut a segment out of the orange disc and deep shadows fell across Botswana. Would I ever see my country from the air again?
We’d soon fly over Rehoboth. My homeland: my parents’ birthplace. My ancestors had trekked to this promised land from the Cape. West was good.
‘The Germans may have ruled us,’ my father once told me, ‘but we did all the work.’ According to my old man, his grandfather had been a Bavarian farmer. Europe was responsible for my blue eyes.
A month after my father died, my aunt took my sister and me away from our hometown’s salty breeze to air that smelt rich and sweet, to a church hall where the community – our community – was reciting prayers in Afrikaans.
She led us to the front of that hall. I’d polished my sister’s red leather shoes that reflected the light from the high windows. Only when my aunt said my name did I look up from those shoes.
Three men sat at a table in front of us. They were much older than my father, but his face was nevertheless somewhere in theirs. One man cleared his throat, shushing everyone inside the hall but not the barking dog outside. I hadn’t remembered the Rehoboth dog until now.
‘Hermanus en Lucia,’ the man said.
I nodded yes when he asked if I understood his important job. The creases on his cheeks joined the wrinkles around his eyes as he smiled. At the sound of my aunt’s voice, I realised he must have asked another question, which he repeated: ‘Do you both know why you are here?’
Although my aunt had explained the purpose of our visit as best she could, neither my sister nor I understood why she’d taken us there.
‘Your mommy’s and your daddy’s families are from this place,’ the man said. ‘“For now the Lord hath made room for us,” Isaac says in Canaan, “and we shall be fruitful in the land.” Isaac was talking about this place. Your home. Rehoboth is your home.’
My sister squeezed my fingers, unseen by the strangers in the hall or the animal waiting outside.
‘Your mommy and the little one are in Heaven.’ The notion of my baby brother trapped in a far-off heaven left me unable to look at the man’s face. ‘Your father abandoned this place and can never return. He must answer to the Good Lord our God. But the same is not true for your sister and you. You have a surviving relative? Your mother’s sister?’
Our aunt spoke up: ‘That woman sent word from the Cape to say that she is pregnant and cannot care for three children.’
‘They have no other family?’ he asked her.
‘No blood relatives, no,’ our aunt confirmed. ‘But I consider these children my family.’
‘Hermanus and Lucia, do you agree?’
Voices called my name. Everyone waited for me, the crying sissy boy, until my aunt, who smelt of talcum powder and lavender water, and warm vanilla sugar from Rupertine’s stollen loaf, crouched down to hug my sister and me. I spent my childhood worrying that one day she might return us, unwanted, to the settlement now twenty thousand feet below me as I sipped whiskey from a paper cup.
That night I opened my spreadsheet to delete my forecast income from Chesley. I removed my future loan repayments to my sister to calculate how much money I’d need to survive until the end of the year. Apart from the little bit I was expecting from Will, I had nothing else. Soon I’d be scratching in the dirt for money.
Unknown to my sister, she’d have to become Patron of Documentary Arts again – supporting me, her starving artist – because it was only a matter of time before I’d need to beg.
I mailed Mitch Danker to ask if he’d like to chat, and received his out-of-office informing me he was in Windhoek. For a week I received no reply from him or Chesley.
—————
Harmony was planning its own Burning Man festival. My sister gave me the news when she told me how Amanda wanted to blitz the Web to encourage ticket sales, and was willing to pay me to capture panoramic shots from Diaz Point.
‘She doesn’t have to ask me twice,’ I said. ‘Don’t they do something similar in the Karoo?’
‘Ja, the South Africans call it AfrikaBurn,’ she said. ‘Except Amanda needs her Lüderitz version to make lots of money for Harmony.’
‘What’s she calling hers?’
‘Primitive Man.’
‘Seriously? Please tell me you’re joking?’
There was no levity in my sister’s eyes.
I wasn’t sure if Amanda had thought about a horde laying waste to her polytunnel and solar panels, but I had enough problems of my own to worry about. In any event, on the morning of my sister’s birthday I came to be crossing Diaz Point’s wooden viaduct while the south-westerly blew a gale as distant music thundered behind us. The outcrop thrust into the Atlantic like an African Calvary. Foul bilge-water pooled on either side of the footbridge. Its stench held memories of my boat trip with my aunt.
At the end of the walkway we crouched low to better steady ourselves and climb the rock-hewn steps, slippery with seawater, up to the padrão. A broken fence circled the flat summit. The wire offered little protection against the flurries that threatened to push us off the cliff into the sea.
A replica of Bartholomew Diaz’s dolerite cross – originally erected in the fifteenth century on the seafarer’s return to Portugal – stood a few feet away from our unsafe vantage point.
‘Health and Safety!’ Will announced as he tested the flimsy railing with both hands.
‘If we could subtract the wind from this equation, it’d be a perfect morning,’ I said so that only my sister could hear, but my words failed to amuse her.
‘I’ve not seen light like this before,’ Will continued. ‘Presumably you’ll have no trouble shooting Harmony from here, Henry?’ Without waiting for my response he went to get a better look at the pillar. ‘This is fake?’ he said of the stone monument.
‘Replica,’ I murmured. ‘The original’s in a museum. In South Africa, I think.’
‘Yet another thing that country stole from us,’ my sister said.
Without warning the wind switched direction and blasted us from the south-east. I’d been screwing my zoom lens into place and almost dropped my camera when the gust hit me.
‘I don’t want to be up here,’ my sister pleaded.
At the Edge of the Desert Page 19