by Damon Galgut
He came to a windmill which stood alone and skeletal in that ruined brown landscape like a monument to a deed done long ago and in the cracked concrete dam that stood at its base a thin gruel of slime had collected. He lay prostrate in it with his mouth pressed to the moisture. He drank. It tasted of sediments from deep in the ground but he drank it as if it were wine. He would have drunk bile, or blood. He felt the liquid move through him like a sort of emotion and his body took on a charge. He sat splay-legged in that primitive mud as if recently created from it and he gazed for a long time at his reflection in its surface with what was possibly amazement. My face. My eyes. My mouth. When he got up again it was as if no time had passed but the sun was sinking in the west already and the earth was exhaling its heat. Far behind him he could see the policeman, advancing still, but slowly now, crippled, demented. His shape was elongated and wavering on the air like an abstract idea of a person.
The man climbed out of the dam and went on. When he had gone for a way he stopped and he saw the policeman come to the dam too and climb in. He experienced again the taste of the water because he knew that the other man was drinking. He sat down on the ground and waited. When the policeman climbed back out of the dam he got up again and went on. He was no longer sure that there was a difference between them or that they were separate from each other and they moved on together across the surface of the world and the sun went down and it got dark and still they continued in duet. They moved through the night in faintest silhouette like dreams that the soil was having.
He didn’t sleep at all and when the sun came up again he was considerably weaker and the policeman had gained distance in the night. He was close enough now for his face to be visible and his buttons glinted like rivets.
He came to something that ran across his path and he stared in dull confusion at the parallel lines with their transverse slats of wood before his memory unpicked meaning in them. Train tracks. He looked at the line and then he followed it, one direction as good as another. The tracks ran on like sutures on the ground and he walked next to them. The earth was flat and barren still. But between the sleepers here and there he saw blades of grass growing. He passed a crushed beer-can and once there was a turd on the tracks. Towards noon of that day he heard a thin metallic humming. He thought it came out of his head. But the humming grew louder and it seemed to come from the ground and then it seemed to come from the tracks. He stopped and looked back. In the white heat and distance he saw the policeman, also stopped next to the tracks. Both of them standing there, waiting.
It came slowly, accreting rather than approaching, a speck becoming a shape and then a form growing quickly in speed. He stepped back and let it pass. It did pass. The engine was hissing and blotched with rust and he thought he saw two men moving in the cab but he wasn’t sure and then the engine was gone and there was wind and the carriages were also going past. He stood stupefied and watched. Car after car after car with metal doors bolted and locked dragging past him in the dust and open platforms piled with pyramids of coal and wheat and one with a yellow car lashed down on it that was jouncing and sliding with the speed and then the carriages became more solid and discrete and their outlines more steady on the eye. There was a gushing sound and the friction of metal and the train was going much slower now. The wind eased and the groaning got softer and then the train stopped altogether. He looked to the left. Next to the track there was a tower of sorts and the engine was next to this tower. There was movement. He looked back in front of him. There was a box-car made of some brown rotting wood and the door in the side of it was open.
He climbed in. It was dark in the car. There were crates stacked up against the sides. In the gloom at the far end there was another human figure crouching. A ragged man in overalls, face hunted and haunted, eyes dark. Much like he was himself. They looked at each other and then the man leaned forward and looked along the line of carriages at the policeman. He watched him come closer and he continued to watch him even when the train jolted underneath him again and again started to move. The policeman made a clutching motion at the nearest car but there was no purchase and he stopped dead and stood with the dust swirling thickly around him. He receded quickly in the haze and the train was moving on, moving on.
Then the man sat back in the gloom. He looked at his companion. Now they recognized each other and after all that had taken place it didn’t seem surprising that they should be reunited here. They still didn’t speak but as the train went into a curve light fanned through the inside of the car and the two of them nodded to each other. Gravely, as passengers do. Then the train gathered speed and Valentine’s head dropped in sleep and the man sat in the open rectangle of the door and he watched how the molten earth poured.
37
There was a box of matches left there for the candles with only one match in it. The flame was a tiny centre of light. He cupped a hand to keep it from dying. There is something in fire no matter how small that is the same as something in us and he looked for an instant into the flame as at some truth from his own life that he had suddenly understood and then he bent with it to the altar that was covered with a worn brocade. He broke a chair and fed it to the flames. In minutes the front of the church from where the minister had delivered his sermons was writhing with light and heat and thickening tendrils of smoke. He turned and ran to the door and out. He stopped only for a moment outside but the plaza was deserted and he ran across it to the northern end and stopped. He looked back and then he ran on.
He went through the streets of the township. Only when the houses ended and the veld began did he lift up his head. The ground was riven and dry. He came to a ditch with brown reeds growing in it and a worn plank laid across and he stopped again and looked behind him. The sky was clear but smoke zigged across it like a thin fatal flaw in something otherwise perfect and he ran over the plank across the ditch and on.
He went a long way that night without sleeping. He had burned one hand in the fire and when he woke at dawn he was in pain. There was a large blister in his palm like a weird white stigma and he tore a piece from his shirt to bind it. With his bandaged hand and his broken gait he limped on over the land.
By mid-morning he saw a line of blue mountains off to his right, very small, very distant, a stain seeping up from the horizon. They were geometric and featureless, a graph of some kind. He altered course and went towards them. They drew him.
By nightfall they were closer. The sun went down but the tiny peaks ahead glowed red and faint like a filament cooling long after the sky had gone dark. Then they also went out.
He came to a farmhouse and orbited warily around it. Then he went closer. There was a washline strung between two poles with a pair of overalls hanging on it. He took the overalls for himself and left his own clothes in their place, flapping ragged and hollow from the wire. There was a well nearby and he winched the metal bucket to the surface and drank the dark water in it. Cool water, earthsmelling. He looked around till he found an old bottle and filled it with the water and went on. Later he found an anthill that was partly hollowed out and he crawled into the chamber and lay down. He slept encased in mud that was crenellated with tunnels like a brain.
At dawn he woke and stretched and set off at a slow run. The mountains rose out of the level plain ahead as sudden as an accident and by noon he was in their foothills. He was diminished and pared by the high peaks, the gorges. He came to a stream. He drank and took off his clothes and washed in it. The water was cold and brilliant on his skin and it continued to ache in him long after he had left it behind. He went on up the steepening ground while the shadow over him became deeper and at dusk he came to a copse of trees and crawled among their dark boles and slept. He woke at first light among a matrix of roots and it was a full minute before he knew where he was.
He wandered on among the outcrops, going higher and higher. He came to a footpath. He followed the path. He passed a scarlet lizard with a ruff of skin around its neck. He saw a snake sliding t
hrough a crevice. He passed a white bone lying next to the path that might have come from any creature’s body, his body. In the afternoon he came to the ridge. The path went over it and down and he saw a valley opening out with a cluster of houses in it. A train track running down from the houses. He crouched behind the rocks to wait.
At twilight he descended, skulking from shadow to shadow like a villain. It was full dark when he came to the houses. In an iron bin overflowing with refuse he found the remains of a meal and he ate ravenously, like a dog, crusts bones skin potatoes beans.
Afterwards he passed along the outskirts of the little settlement till he came to the railway track glimmering faintly. Standing on it in a prolonged procession of inert formations was an engine and a line of carriages. He walked along them and back again. There was nobody else nearby. On the door of one of the cars the padlock was rusted and he used a branch and the remains of his strength to force it to open for him. Crawled in. He lay in the dark and comfort of odours and he thought that he would leave before daylight.
But the sun had cleared the rim of the mountains already when he woke and the train was rocking like a boat. He stood in the doorway and saw the village, the drab houses, backsliding. Then the train gathered speed and he heard it under him and he heard the echo returning. He sat against the wall of the carriage and slept again and woke, slept and woke. He saw the mountains recede like a bite-mark on the sky and then a charred plain replaced them. Outside the train there was nothing. He slept more and when he woke the train was stopping and then a man climbed up into the car.
38
He said a word to his companion.
Valentine looked strangely at him. He mimed the action of drinking. Valentine gestured to a crate. He saw that the crate had been opened. He crawled to it and inside it and maybe inside all of them were bottles filled with bright yellow cooldrink and he took one and opened it and drank.
He drank another and another and another. He and his ragged companion sat hunkered in the open door together, drinking bottles dry and discarding them. They threw them out of the door and they burst on the ground in tiny and beautiful explosions. There was nothing to eat in the car. He had an urge to take the other man’s hand and because he wanted to he did so. Then they crouched there together like lovers, not looking at each other, not speaking.
The sun went down. The train moved through the dark and he saw flames spurting up from the wheels. He saw the burned-out carapace of a car standing in the wilderness where no road was. He fell asleep as if a switch had been thrown in his head and when he opened his eyes again he was lying on his back and Valentine had retreated to his corner and was crying out in his dreams. Nee broeder, he called, moenie moenie. He sat up and looked out through the doorway and they were passing through a bare stony country with low hills, thin scrubby bushes. He saw a fence made of barbed wire and sheep following each other like people and the train passed howling through a settlement of tin shacks between which were men women children standing staring or running after the train and the wind of its passage made their fire lean backward and sparks flew up on the air. Then the dark clapped down like a hand as if they had never been. He staggered to his feet and pissed out the door into the world. The first time in three days. He lay again and was again instantly asleep as if a blind had dropped in his brain and he dreamed about a woman that might have been his mother or perhaps she was some other woman.
When he woke again the train was juddering to a stop. The sky through the door was light. He crawled to the crate and took two more bottles out. The other man was sleeping in the corner with his face pressed against the wood. He nodded to his back and when the train had stopped completely he climbed out of the car. The train was standing at a siding and there were other carriages and other tracks nearby and a line of low buildings in the distance and the smell of the sea on the air.
He went towards the buildings. They looked shuttered and barred but there were people moving around between them who didn’t pay him any mind and he went around them to the back. There was a marsh here with beyond it a town of some kind. He saw streets and windows and cars moving and he set out across the marsh. Mud sucked at his feet, reeds were sibilant around him. When he came to the other side he was smeared in the primeval murk and encased in it up to the knees.
He thought at first he was in a city. There were so many people in the streets and cars parked everywhere at angles. Then he saw that the people were here for some reason. They stood around in groups and some of them had cameras in their hands or mounted on tripods and some of them were holding pieces of blackened glass that looked insanely beautiful to him. They were looking up into the sky and he also looked up but he could see nothing in it.
He was very hungry now and he wandered through the dusty streets looking for food. He didn’t know where he was but he supposed that all towns were alike. Only after he had stumbled its length for an hour did he look up and see the spire of a church and something in it, the angle or shape, arrested him. He went closer. He stood astounded, looking up. He went closer again and when he stood on the blue slate outside he cast around him wildly as if something had been lost. He seemed about to cry. But he didn’t cry. He stood still and looked around at the town and then he dropped to one knee for a moment and got up.
39
In the wilderness in the night the policeman came to the top of a rise and saw a farmhouse below him, tiny and square with lighted windows and smoke rising from a chimney like a small child’s dream of a house, and he hesitated only a moment before he came staggering down the slope towards it. As he came closer he saw an old black man in old clothes chopping wood at the back and the old man stopped chopping and stood with his axe in his hands and stared. A huge inbred dog got up from the shadow at the side of the house and ran at him, barking. A chain pulled it back as it lunged and he passed while it yearned with its mouth. He went in through the back door. A kitchen with a wooden table with a family sitting around it. A man, a woman, two daughters. They sat with knives and forks in their hands and stared slack-jawed and stricken at this apparition that had entered their lives. Ragged and reeking like the survivor of some ultimate catastrophe.
He pulled up a chair at the table and sat down. There was a meal piled up on plates waiting to be served, food wrested from branches, from under the ground, from inside the bodies of animals. He reached out with his filthy, his bloody hands and began to eat without looking at them. Such was his hunger, such was his need.
He didn’t notice the commotion and the fleeing around him but at some point he looked up and saw overturned chairs and the room empty except for the glowering face of the farmer. Two barrels pointed at him.
‘No,’ he said, still chewing.
‘What no?’ said the farmer. ‘What no?’
‘I’m with you,’ Captain Mong said. He was gnawing a piece of chicken and he laid a fine bone down on the edge of his plate. ‘I’m the law,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘I’m with you.’
In the morning the farmer took him home. The two daughters stood hand in hand outside to wave him goodbye. The farmer drove down rutted tracks scarcely discernible to the eye and through gates that stood in the desolation to mark the entrance to nothing and in time they came to a road and that road led to another. Hours had gone past by now. Then he saw where he was. The road came to the quarry and went past it and over a ridge and on and there were other cars on the road, all of them going towards the town.
He said, ‘What is it? What’s going on?’
The farmer looked at him and shrugged.
‘The cars. Where is everybody going to?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the farmer.
All along the streets of the town there were cars parked and people walking and the commotion was charged as if an event was imminent. The farmer dropped him in the main street. They said goodbye and shook hands and said they hoped to see each other again but they didn’t and then the farmer was gone.
The policeman went in
search of the doctor. He found him in his office near the wharf. The doctor made him take off his clothes. He lay naked on the cool table while the doctor peered and prodded at his body with his fingers and the tips of his tools. Lift your arm, he said, lift up your leg. Turn over.
‘What’s happening outside?’ he said. ‘Why are all the people here?’
The doctor straightened up. ‘It’s the eclipse today,’ he said.
‘The eclipse.’
‘This is the centre of it.’
‘Oh,’ said the policeman.
‘Does it hurt when I push here?’
He came out of the doctor’s office trussed-up and bandaged like a birthday present. He had a cracked rib and a torn ligament and a variety of bruises on his body. The little finger on his left hand was broken. He smelled bad even to himself. He limped all the way to the white church and past it along the road to the township. Everything looked different to his eyes but it may have been the quality of the light.
He came to the plaza. The blackened shell of the church stood at one end but he averted his eyes from it. His motorbike was standing outside the wall of sandbags in the place where it always stood. But it didn’t look the way that it had. The paint was scarred and scuffed and the front tyre was shredded and spokes stood out as if in shock. He went past it and the sandbags into the charge office at the front with its counter and the pimply boy sitting behind it.
The boy looked at Captain Mong as if he were famous or dead.
The Captain went past him too and into his own office and looked around at the desk and the noticeboard and the cabinet and the picture of Jesus on the wall. He went around behind his desk and sat. The glass bowl was there like a gypsy’s crystal ball but the goldfish was floating on its back. The Captain stared into the transparent globe as if his fortune were indeed revealed there and then he dipped his fingers into it and retrieved the fish with distaste. He held it by the edge of its tail. He looked at it and then he flung it up and it hit the roof and stuck there. In time it hardened like a fossil.