‘Me?’ my sister said. ‘Pisces.’
‘I don’t think we can see your constellation. What are you, Amanda?’
‘Aquarius.’
‘The cup-bearer. Also the wrong time of year for the southern hemisphere. Henry?’
‘Scorpio.’
‘That makes sense,’ Amanda said.
‘You’re in the centre of the Milky Way,’ he said, ignoring her remark. ‘Antares is easy to find.’ He pointed at the sky. ‘Come close to me.’
I shifted onto his blanket so that my head was next to his, squinting at the scattered light just beyond his fingertip, uncertain if I was peering in the right place.
With his help, I found the star. It was brighter than I’d expected, with a strong reddish glow. Sixten drew a line from it to Dschubba, a remote glimmer, to create the scorpion’s forehead. Excited to be identifying a pattern in the chaos, I said, ‘Where’s the rest?’ The curving arachnid was obvious now that he’d shown it to me. ‘That’s its tail?’
‘Yes, nine or ten stars all the way down to the sting. That isn’t a single star at the tip, but two: Shaula and Lesath. Scorpius is an interesting cluster. It’s where astronomers are discovering the exoplanets. All of that life out there just waiting to be found …’
For hours we scanned the sky for UFOs as Sixten spoke about the constellations. He knew their myths. ‘They’re so close,’ he kept saying, and I couldn’t decide if he meant the stars or the aliens. ‘If I stand up I can touch them.’
‘You honestly believe there’s life up there?’ I said.
‘As a scientist, I have to say we don’t know. But as a human being, I can only assume that because there’s so much on our own planet, even in its most inhospitable regions, that the rest of the universe has got to be teeming with life. Only a small percentage of extraterrestrial life might be intelligent, but some will have formed civilisations and might even have developed technologies that outstrip our own. Just imagine what their tech could do for us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Improve global food yields and give us access to clean energy. Cure cancer. Disease. Eliminate death. They could help us in all sorts of amazing ways.’
‘Possibly,’ I said, because in my limited experience an unbalanced power relationship almost never ended well. ‘You’re assuming that your advanced aliens will want to help us. Perhaps they’ll cure our diseases to make us stronger slaves.’
‘You don’t seem like a pessimist.’
‘I’m not.’
We puffed smoke signals on behalf of humanity as the exploding cosmos hung inches above us. The Southern Cross drifted like a kite in the breeze. I fell upwards, tumbling into the open sky. I floated among the stars. From a high vantage point, I contemplated the glowing fibres on the Earth far below me criss-crossing the land like animal tracks. And further afield, scattered around Lüderitz, as if marking my path to salvation, lay the concentration camp’s unmarked graves.
‘There’s one,’ Keanu said.
No, there was nothing alien about the satellite. Sunlight reflecting off a man-made craft’s titanium shell created the flicker across the sky.
We grew bored waiting for the little green men to save us, and the conversation turned to the London bombings. I wasn’t interested in that so I scandalised everyone near me by ‘outing’ closeted Hollywood film stars based on rumours I’d heard.
‘And what about you, Henry?’ Amanda said. ‘Your love life?’ They were her first words to me all night.
‘Me? I’m between relationships.’
‘Some people in life are fortunate to find a person who loves them back,’ she said. ‘They go to sleep at night knowing that the person lying beside them loves them more than anyone else in the world. And then there are others, like me, who try as I might, seem never to get there. Perhaps that’s my lock in life.’
Lock was more fitting than lot tonight.
‘I don’t show a lot of emotion,’ she continued, ‘and I regret that.’
I hadn’t considered how uncomfortable she might be feeling, or how she longed for someone to love her.
‘Me too.’ I inadvertently spoke my words out loud.
‘I haven’t had a good life,’ she said. ‘Occasionally, like tonight, I feel like I belong to the human race. But I know I’ll soon slip back into my old defensive mode and I wish it wasn’t this way. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could leave all of the bad stuff in our past?’
‘You seriously never heard of Koevoet?’ Keanu said to Sixten. He pulled up his T-shirt to reveal his latest acquisition: the words ‘KOEVOET’ and ‘PROELIO PROCUSI’ tattooed around his left nipple. He explained that the Latin motto belonged to the South African Defence Force’s old 32 Battalion. It meant forged in battle.
‘Nooit,’ Keanu said, seeking me out. ‘Henry, you need to do a movie about the Angolan war. Go speak to my old man. He was up on the Border and did lots of crazy shit. We should go visit his pozzie in Swakop – I’ll introduce you – so he can tell you the messed-up stuff the army made him do.’
‘The South African Army?’ Sixten clarified.
‘Ja, it was fucked,’ Keanu said. ‘My pa can tell you stories about Koevoet that will straighten your hair.’
‘What’s that?’ Sixten said.
‘A koevoet?’
‘It’s the name of a police unit,’ I explained.
‘Ja, it’s Afrikaans for that metal tool you use to open wooden boxes. Not a ratchet … it’s more like the crowbar that ripped the lid off Angola so that we could grab all the terrys hiding up there. And let me tell you, that sounds way milder than what the army actually did. Genuine! They caught a terry and made him sing like a canary. Koevoet didn’t waste time. They pack all the Angolan okies into a lekker military plane, no blindfolds, no nothing, and they tune the main terry guy that either he talks or his buds learn how to fly.’
‘Fly?’ Sixten said.
‘Ja, it’s a quick lesson, but with limited success. My father says, “We kept trying to perfect human self-propelled flight but we never found a oke with the knack.” So they take the guys over the sea—’
‘Wait,’ Sixten said. ‘“Terry”?’
Displeased with the interruptions, Keanu said, ‘A terry. Terrorist. So they gooi the terrys into the plane, they put them and their terry buds inside there, and they take them for a nice excursion over the Atlantic. And the soldiers start interrogating. If they’re unhappy with the ringleader’s story, the army guys open the door and chuck out one of the terrys.’
‘They’d pretend, right?’ Sixten said.
I stopped rolling my new joint.
‘No, Jack, for realsies. You know like those guys with parachutes? Skydivers! Except this oke isn’t lucky enough to get a chute. My dad can tell you all that stuff. You guys should do this in Europe. It will sort out your terrorists in no time.’
‘I think we’ve heard enough,’ Will said.
‘Of psychos kicking people out planes?’ Amanda said. ‘I agree.’
‘Like I say,’ Keanu emphasised, not taking his eyes off me, ‘my dad was just a fitter and turner on a smallholding before he retired. So there’s nothing psycho about him. But I got another movie idea for you, Henry. One night my dad was up by the Border, you know, taking potties at Cuban terrys, him and his best friend since high school, best chinas, so anyway they’re up there by the Border and then one night, late late late, like one o’clock in the morning, they’re on patrol waiting for brave terrys to sneak onto the base. And then my dad hears something.’
‘I suddenly have a very bad feeling about this,’ someone behind me cut in. I recognised the voice – it belonged to Quinty. He was smiling when I turned to look at him. ‘I’m in time for a bedtime story?’ he said.
Taking no notice of the Australian, Keanu continued: ‘So my dad shoots. Bang! And just like that his best friend is dead. One time.’
‘That’s awful,’ Will said, horrified. ‘I honestly think we’ve heard enou
gh.’
Keanu said, ‘Ja, my old man was cut up. He can tell you all about it.’ (And because Keanu was addressing all of this to me, Will gave me a filthy look as if I’d been encouraging the kid.) ‘You know what? You must do a massive flippin’ documentary about this as well as SWAPO’s treatment of their comrades in Zambia. Ja, the Namibian liberation army wasn’t so clean either. You guys know what happened in the Mboroma camp?’
‘I think that’s more than enough, Keanu,’ Amanda said. ‘Thank you.’
My phone rang. It took a while to find.
‘Hello?’ I said, struggling to move away from the group. I was too goofed to stay upright, so I only managed a few paces towards my bakkie before I fell on my knees. I didn’t want to remain there because I couldn’t trust myself not to get behind the steering wheel, so I attempted to stand again.
‘Can you talk?’ said the voice on the other end of the line.
‘Hold on a moment.’
Keanu pointed at me: ‘That’s what you should do.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Will said.
‘Here,’ Amanda said, handing Keanu a beer.
‘You’ll need something stronger than that to shut him up,’ Quinty said. ‘Got any Kool-Aid? Put a cork in him permanently.’
I announced, ‘I’m going for a walk,’ before striding purposefully towards the lopsided ocean.
Glad to be rid of everyone, I made for the faint vapour trails gathering near the water where I lost my footing and sat down.
‘Who is this?’ I asked my phone.
‘Mitch,’ came the reply. ‘Is now a good time to talk?’
‘Mitch Danker? Yes, I can talk.’
‘Good. I wanted to ask about your latest interviews. I’d like to get my hands on your unedited files, if I may.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It might be nothing, but the people in your latest batch sound a bit tentative.’
‘Tentative?’
‘I don’t quite know how to put this, but something’s off. As if they’ve studied what they’re telling you, which might be down to your edit. The timing’s a bit off, that’s all.’
The lighthouse beam swung across the open ocean and came around to the beach where it lit the waves raking the stones. Its passage gave me no comfort, and I longed to be home.
‘Henwy?’
‘Yes, I’m still here. I’ve sent you everything.’
‘Perhaps I’m not making myself clear. I’m asking for your untouched footage. All of it.’
I considered his request.
‘Hen—’
‘I’m here.’
‘Well, I suppose if you’re not going to say anything then you should know that I have misgivings about what you’ve sent me. I’m hesitant about using it. And I’m going to need to speak to Chesley. What the fuck have you done?’
I ended the call, but kept arguing with Mitch Danker. ‘No,’ I said out loud to him and the stars, ‘you won’t do this to me. You won’t do this to them.’ But I couldn’t escape his overhanging threat. I would erase all of my Herero interviews when I got home so that Mitch Danker would never see them. Let him drive around and find out just how difficult it was to interview people in Omaheke and Otjozondjupa and Kunene. I’d sent Chesley everything he’d paid for, and my original files were none of his business. I hated Mitch Danker and Chesley and Jago and even Barbara Braun and Hulga Meier for that matter. Despised them all.
Life wasn’t turning out the way I’d hoped. My only serious relationship had been with an engineering student at university. He was unexciting, and I discarded him assuming that I’d find someone else in a few months. But until Jago, it had been a dry white season. This was my lock in life.
—————
I found my parents’ corpses when I was eight years old. The gunshot had blown away my father’s face. It threw his head back to reveal what appeared to be a wide-open mouth that spoke no words, gave no explanation. His blood had dried so black that it formed indecipherable patterns on his chest and arms. My mother’s face turned away when he shot her. Her limp form couldn’t shield my brother Hendrik, who’d been too young to spend the afternoon with Lucia and me at the Shark Island pool.
My aunt told me she found me running up and down the corridor, back and forth, frantic until she caught me. ‘Sh-sh-sh,’ she said as she held me. ‘You saw nothing,’ she said as she bathed me. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said as she dried me. ‘It wasn’t real,’ she said as I glimpsed my colourless face in the bathroom mirror. The colour had also drained away from the patch of sky through the window. Until that afternoon, I’d known my colours: sky was blue and clouds white and sun yellow. But now my eyes and lips, along with everything around me, had turned to nothing.
—————
Someone ran into me, onto me, over me. An elbow hit my jaw. I couldn’t tell who it was, but I smelt their deodorant.
‘I wanted to make sure you hadn’t drowned,’ Quinty said as he scrambled upright. ‘Sorry about that.’ He shone his phone’s torch in my face which didn’t help the pain, so I pushed it away. ‘It’s so confusing out here.’
‘I’ll survive.’
‘If I’d known I was literally going to run into you, I’d have brought some booze.’
‘I’ve had enough for one night.’
‘I saw you walking off. I was worried that something’d happened.’
‘I needed time to think.’
The beam passed overhead, and I caught a glimpse of Quinty watching me. ‘How’re you doing?’ he said. His concern irritated me. Though I was tempted to respond with something glib like, ‘The stars are back in the sky where they belong,’ to my great shame tears came to my eyes.
‘Henry?’
I walked through the mist to the rough surf so that I might hide in the wet air. He caught up. I wouldn’t stop. So he grasped my arm and hugged me.
‘Whatever you’re going through,’ he whispered, ‘it’ll pass. You’ll get through it.’
I kissed his shoulder, and eased myself away from him. My darkness could never leave me.
A distant foghorn blasted three times, and a cruise liner, as big as an office building, approached the harbour from the north. It was unusual for a ship to moor this late at night. Something was wrong out there.
‘Will’s left Harmony,’ Quinty said.
‘Is that what he says?’
‘You’re not convinced? He was assuring me last month that he’d keep me busy day and night until I died. But I guess I should have seen this coming. Amanda’s spending all their money. She hasn’t paid me for months. And you’ve heard what he’s doing in Elizabeth Bay? I mean, give me a fucking break.’
‘They also owe me.’
‘Fucking Poms. What Will and Amanda don’t understand is that if Harmony shuts down, they can swan off back to London, but so many people rely on that place. Sixten’s all in. He told me he doesn’t have a penny left. If they run out of Europeans escaping their apocalypse, who knows if it’ll stay afloat?’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any dope on you?’
‘Dope? Sorry, no. You smoke a lot.’
‘Ha! Not nearly enough.’
With one arm over my shoulder, he encouraged me to walk along the shore. I told him about the night at Twin Palms when I’d first met Will, about how the Brit had insisted on sharing his theories about civilisation. It felt good to despise Will together.
‘That sounds like him,’ Quinty said. ‘Between you and me, I think he might be a bit bipolar. Not that it matters, but it would explain his exuberance. Keanu’s on form tonight …’
‘Not sure what’s going on with him.’
‘Other than he’s very drunk? You saw his hideous tattoo, right? After you left, he narrowed down his list of suspects for today’s London attack to the French Foreign Legion and Mossad.’
‘It’s not such a bad tattoo.’
‘Oh, come on. It’s terrible. Whoever did that should be locked up.
Scarred the poor guy for life.’
Two sets of headlights launched themselves over Nautilus Hill to illuminate the beach. They zipped past Will’s bonfire, hooting as they raced.
‘Too fast,’ I said.
‘Wankers,’ Quinty said.
The cars came to a halt between us and the fire. I had a fleeting realisation that if Quinty hadn’t come to find me, the cars might have driven over me as I lay on the beach. Their doors flung open to shouts and loud music. Silhouettes began dancing in front of headlights.
‘Looks like the party’s started,’ Quinty said.
‘Good. I want to get hammered. I can’t do any more thinking tonight.’
Keanu horsed about with the newcomers. Stripped to their waists, they danced around flames reaching up into the sky that cast deceptive shadows swapping faces with bodies.
My chest reverberated to the beat. A troupe of men in Amanda’s animal skins and rubber boots, one carrying a drum, rushed at us. The drummer mimicked us, repeating our mistakes if we stumbled, and before long we were chasing him around the flames. We shouted each time he punched the air.
Amanda wore a rubber safari suit as she moved in time with the beat. We joined the drummer in urging her on, kicking the sand, until she spun around with arms outstretched.
We stole glowing sticks from the fire, and shouting ‘Charge bayonets!’ ran at each other. Quinty’s burning rifle came perilously close to my face. I dropped to my knees, waiting for his next rush of flame, and grabbed his weapon. I used it to draw haloes in the sky, swirling it with mine, making wide circles above my head. The two smoky pieces served as charred canes supporting my dance. People in headdresses with painted eyes and springbok horns joined me.
Sixten sported a pair of tattooed lions on his torso. He held his arms tight across his chest, hands snug in his pits, as sweat dripped down his back. He drew his arms behind him, as if about to dive into the sand, so that his lions were crouching. An uneasy heat burnt the base of my spine – my guts turning hot – as the pain forced me to bend over. My toes struck something sharp. I lost my footing, and winded myself as I fell. All around me the springboks demanded my attention.
Music vibrated deep within me. My arms and legs were no longer jointed but zigzagging appendages flapping in time with the drums. Shadows in the fire concentrated themselves into shapes. Moving light flashed red-black branches across my vision to reveal a watching face. Having prowled the length of this land, my childhood monster had returned. It showed itself to be implacable and enduring.
At the Edge of the Desert Page 21