Writ in Water

by Natasha Mostert

  In one instance he had managed to get into the ceiling of the house. That had been a superb experience. For months he was able to look down on the occupant through strategically placed holes. With his last subject he was so bold as to sit in a chair in her darkened room and watch her while she was asleep only an arm’s length away. The low-level light from outside allowed him to see the white slash of her arm, which was folded back on the pillow beside her. Every now and then her lips would make a soft sighing sound as though she were deeply tired. There was a taste of cigarettes on her breath. He knew he was leaving traces of himself behind as well. The smell of his body seeping into the fabric of the chair. A stray hair clinging to the headrest.

  He was not a stalker. The impulses driving the stalker were crude and he was not a crude man. Simply terrorising someone held no appeal to him. The game was far more elegant than that. He was engaged in a research project and he was disciplined in his approach. And so he made notes of his observations and even catalogued them in neatly labelled folders. Every one of his subjects had their own file filled with the details of their daily lives.

  The game lasted until he became bored, his observations stale. He would then move on and the subjects he had watched would be little the wiser—largely oblivious of the presence that had shadowed their footsteps for months, even years. True, they may have sensed something—a premonition, a slight chill in the air—but he was extraordinarily proficient at being invisible. This was one of the challenges of the game, to walk through someone’s life leaving no trace behind. And he was very skilful. He was only caught once. A real pity, the way that had turned out…

  He had reached the end of the avenue of trees. The house loomed in the darkness.

  Odd. There was a light downstairs in the living room.

  He crept up slowly but, just as he reached the window, the room went dark. He peered inside but could see no movement. A few moments later he heard a sharp click emanating from the front door. A key turned.

  He stepped back and looked up at the second floor. A window suddenly turned yellow but he could not see the person whose hand had turned on the light.

  Who was living inside Adam Buchanan’s house?

  FIVE

  IT WAS DARK by the time he left the cave where the windwalkers lived. His back was stiff and he was feeling cold.

  He started to walk swiftly in the direction of the tiny twinkling lights floating in the distance. The mist was rolling in from the sea and the man could feel clammy tendrils of fog touching his cheek. During the day the sun was a blistering ball of heat. At night it was cold, and chilly too, the early mornings when the ocean pushed inland the only moisture the desert would experience for months, even years.

  He had reached the outskirts of the town of Kepler’s Bay. In another five minutes he would be at the Purple Palace, where his Norton was parked at the back of the bar.

  The wind was blowing and the smell of sea salt was strong in the air. Kepler’s Bay was situated right on top of a rocky shore. It had one of the best natural harbours along this treacherous, deadly coastline on the south-west side of the African continent. But Kepler’s Bay was isolated and difficult to reach even by the demanding standards of this vast desert country. Stuck in the south-west corner of Namibia, separated from the rest of the country by a sea of dunes, the town’s very survival was precarious and its population dwindling.

  Once upon a time Kepler’s Bay had been a busy and prosperous place, a place that managed to lure visitors to its burning shores with the promise of wealth; the promise of diamonds. Buried beneath its hot dunes and the underwater gravel plains of its coast were precious stones waiting to be mined by men undaunted by the sun and never-ending wind.

  For a while Kepler’s Bay had flourished. Apart from the diamond mines, the town became home to numerous fishing fleets and canning factories. But when even richer yields of diamonds were discovered hundreds of miles to the south, the exodus began. Diamond towns up and down the coast emptied and became ghosts. Kepler’s Bay managed to hang on.

  Barely. Diamonds were still mined in the area, but the days when itinerant diggers could stake their claims were long gone. The diamond business today was tightly regulated and controlled. The small number of men still mining the desert and the seabed hugging the shore were salaried workers. No longer could a fabulous fortune be amassed by any stray adventurer with dreams of glory.

  Now, as the man walked into the town, blowing into his cupped hands in an effort to warm them, he could see the shadowy outline of his figure reflected in the vacant, dark windows of empty shops and houses. No other footsteps but his own echoed in the narrow streets.

  Still, there was a community here, mainly fishermen and employees of the few remaining canning factories. Many of them congregated at night at the town’s most popular watering hole. He could hear laughter and the sound of a pulsing rock anthem as he drew nearer to the substantial building, which took up almost half the block. It was an old mansion, built during German colonial times. Its proportions were beautiful and the onion-shaped spire contributed a touch of inspired whimsy. But, up close, the place looked shabby with its plasterwork battered by a wind that rarely let up and several windows cracked and dirty.

  He pushed open the door and winced at the sound level. The place was packed. He recognised some of the men who propped up the bar; big men with skin like leather and muscled shoulders and forearms. They were commercial diamond-divers and for several months of the year he joined their ranks. It was a difficult, dangerous way to make a living, but the pay was not bad.

  During the winter months, he turned his back on the ocean. These were the months in which he subjected himself to self-imposed exile, and would not allow himself to speak to a living soul, sometimes for weeks at a stretch. He was just emerging from one such period of isolation. Winter was drawing to a close. Spring was in the air. Come summer, he would renew his contract with the company and get back to work.

  One of the men at the bar had spotted him and raised a hand in languid greeting. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he should join them. He was not really friends with them, but he had spent many evenings drinking in their company.

  But it was already late. He pushed through the bodies until he reached the very end of the bar where the barman, a small wizened man with a shock of luxurious red hair, was writing in a ledger.

  ‘Ben, I’m taking the bike.’

  Without looking up, the tiny man pushed his hand into a large beer mug filled with pencils and dropped a bunch of keys on the counter. ‘I’ve filled her up for you,’ he said, hardly moving his lips.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Mark’s been looking for you. Says a new shipment of books came in.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll stop by sometime this week.’

  The tiny man nodded. ‘Will do.’

  The clean tang of the air outside was almost a shock after the close, smoke-filled air inside the bar. His Norton was parked against the outside wall. The bike was old, but he had rebuilt it from scratch and as he turned the key in the ignition and pumped the throttle, the engine came to life immediately with a satisfyingly deep growl.

  The wind was much stronger now and he had to pull his goggles over his face to keep the sand particles from stinging his eyes. Tonight the wind would sigh and moan among the dunes, remoulding and reshaping them. Soo—oop—wa the Nama people called this wind and its never-ending lament. He had never got used to its almost constant presence, and after all these years he was still in awe of its creatively destructive power.

  He turned the bike onto the dirt road leading south. The bike’s headlight threw a white beam across the road, but the moonlight was so strong, he didn’t really need it. On his right, the ocean gleamed. He always noticed reflective surfaces. He was repulsed by and attracted to them at the same time. He never looked into a mirror if he could help it. He even shaved without the help of one.

  For the first twenty minutes the road was adequate, but then i
t stopped abruptly, and for the rest of the way he had to push the bike through thick sand, sweating inside his leather jacket and keeping his head lowered against the force of the wind. It was another fifteen minutes before he saw the dark outlines of the abandoned houses of Kepler’s Folly—sister town to Kepler’s Bay, and long since deserted. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath.

  Some of these double-storey houses were more than a hundred years old, but no one had lived here since 1956, when the last diamond diggers had packed up and left for the stupendously rich deposits at the mouth of the Orange River. The houses were large, even grandiose, but they had been claimed by the desert. Every day ‘slow sand’ blew in through half-open doors and windows, slumping against the inside walls in thick folds.

  A few kilometres to the south-east was yet another, if bigger, ghost town. In its heyday just before World War I, it had been the richest place on the planet, boasting a post office, a casino and a lavish lifestyle. Caviar and white flannel trousers were among the entries in the big order book, which was still resting, face open, on the dusty counter of the general store. The hospital there had boasted the first X-ray machine in the southern hemisphere. Opera singers were imported from France for entertainment. But, as with Kepler’s Folly, the discovery of richer diamond deposits had bled the life out of the town, condemning it to death.

  The man slowly pushed the bike past the graceful façades of the empty houses looming in the darkness. There were no streets here, only desert sand, and the houses were arranged haphazardly. A loose piece of corrugated iron suddenly rattled viciously and made him jump. But it was only the wind.

  The house he had appropriated for himself stood on the very far edge of the town. From the outside it seemed derelict and he supposed it was. There was no plumbing. No electricity. During his entire first year he had squatted inside the building, not even bothering to try and cover the broken windows. He would lie in his sleeping bag, night after night, listening to the wind blowing through the open panes, bringing in the sand, slowly eroding the plaster on the walls. And he would feel lonely. So terribly lonely. At times the loneliness had been so overwhelming he thought he might go mad with the emptiness around and inside him.

  But little by little he had made the place home. He now had a proper bed and a few other pieces of furniture. He did his cooking in the hearth or on a portable gas stove. He had an outside latrine.

  He opened the door and pushed the Norton ahead of him into the house. If he left it outside, the paintwork would never last. His fingers searched for and found the box of matches and the gas lamp he always left on the windowsill just inside the door. Striking a match, he held it to the wick and blinked against the sudden white glare.

  He took off his jacket and stretched tiredly. The room in which he stood was large and held only a battered leather club chair facing a black-stained fireplace, a writing table and a massive old-fashioned medicine chest with tiny drawers. One entire wall showed makeshift shelves supporting row upon row of books. He was mildly dyslexic and as a child he had hated reading. But this was the desert’s unexpected gift. Long, empty nights filled with long, empty hours and the time to discover something so precious, he was willing to struggle with letters often jumbled and out of sync. ‘Words are weariness,’ it says in the Upanishads, but to him words were life.

  He left the room, gas lamp in hand, and walked down a passageway until he reached the kitchen. After washing his face in a large enamel bowl, he reached for the bottle of Johnnie Walker and headed back to the front room.

  He placed the lamp on the writing desk and sat down in front of it. Opening the drawer, he took from it a sheet of smooth, heavily embossed writing paper. He picked up the old-fashioned nibbed pen and dipped it into the pot of ink. He always used this particular pen when he wrote these letters. Ink was not easy to come by, and he probably should settle for an ordinary ballpoint. But when he wrote to her he wanted to do it right.

  It usually took him up to two weeks to finish a letter. Nine years he’d lived here and in that time he had written a letter every fortnight. Sometimes even two or three. He had never counted them, but by this time he must have written hundreds. After finishing a letter, he would place it in an envelope, as if ready to post. For a day it would rest on his desk, untouched, and then he’d seal it and place it in one of the tiny drawers of the medicine chest. The following day he would start on the next letter.

  He never read through the old letters; once they were sealed in their envelopes, that’s where they stayed. Maybe after all these years he was repeating himself. In the early days he had smoked dagga almost constantly and those letters probably reflected that. Mad letters. Letters incoherent with grief. Letters stained with rage and self-pity. They were all there, waiting for her.

  The first letters he had written were written out of fear. It would be night, the walls smudged with moonlight and strange shadows, the silence around him thick and smothering. Never had he experienced silence like this. And his teeth would clatter with dread, his body would shake.

  Sometimes the outlines of the room would become blurred and he’d be back in the nursery, only eight years old. On the far side of the room was Richard, his nose bloody, his eye already swelling. And the moment was filled with hate. With danger. With emotions so toxic they had turned the nursery with its cheerful wallpaper of cosy moons and smiling suns into a war zone. Two small boys staring at each other with open enmity, their hostile words like bloodied shards of glass littering the whitewashed floorboards between them. And then he’d blink and the nursery would fade into the shadows and he’d be back in the desert. That’s when he had started writing to her. By telling her all about it, expressing it all on paper, he had managed to cling to his sanity.

  Who was she? Where was she? He did not know, but just as an amputee may still sense in his nerves the ghost of a missing arm, so he knew that out there was a woman who would make him feel complete. In her thoughts he would find himself reflected. Her mind would be his haven; her heart his refuge.

  He had searched for her in previous lives as well; he knew that in his bones. Somehow their lives had never connected, one walking too far ahead of the other. But in this life he would find her, he had made himself that promise. How he would manage it, marooned here in the desert, he did not know. But already, he was sure, his thoughts were knocking at the door to her mind, if only she would allow herself to listen.

  He sat there in the pool of light at the table, the tiny flame washing the immediate darkness with a yellow glow. Outside his window was a vast dark emptiness. And with eyes half-closed he was dreaming of a woman he might have known, in a world where they have yet to meet.

  SIX

  THE SKY was filled with low clouds and the wind was cool. Justine parked the MG in the shelter of the plane tree growing outside Ainstey’s post office. Glancing up at the sky, she decided to put up the roof of the car. It was looking like rain.

  After buying some stamps and withdrawing cash at the ATM, she stopped off at the pharmacy. When she had unpacked her photographic equipment the day before, she noticed that she had brought with her only three ordinary measuring jugs. She was hoping the pharmacist could supply her with a laboratory-quality measuring cylinder.

  She was in luck. The pharmacist, a gently smiling man with vague eyes, did not have a cylinder to sell, but he was willing to give her one from his own stock. She waited at the counter while he rummaged around in the dispensary, which was hidden from view.

  ‘Hiya.’

  The voice came from behind her. She turned around. A girl, dressed in black leggings and an orange-and-lime pullover, was looking at her morosely. Her face seemed familiar, but it wasn’t until Justine noticed the chain around her neck that she was able to place her. Angelface. It was the girl from the corner shop.

  ‘Oh, hi.’

  The girl leaned past Justine and picked up a small white paper bag with a neatly printed label from a plastic tray on the counter. She shouted, ‘You
’ll put it on me mum’s account then, Mr Grimes.’ Turning to Justine she said almost defensively, ‘Me mum’s pills.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I like your bracelets.’ The girl pointed at the two silver bracelets encircling Justine’s wrists. They were thick, heavy and fully three inches wide. They were attractive. They were also very good at hiding scars.

  ‘Thank you.’

  The girl was watching her with an expression of reluctant respect. ‘And the tattoos. They’re awesome.’

  Justine involuntarily touched the two small tattoos sitting high on her shoulder; lasting reminders of a long-ago episode of teenage defiance. ‘Oh. Well… thanks, again.’

  ‘Are you still living at Paradine Park?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You’re there all the time then.’

  Justine looked at the girl carefully. ‘Pretty much. Why?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘Probably dangerous all by yourself. Me boyfriend says anyone who lives there by himself must have his head not screwed on right.’ As she spoke she nodded her head in the direction of the open door and Justine looked past her shoulder. A youth was sitting on a motorbike outside. Black jeans. Black jacket. Black bike. He had his helmet on and she couldn’t see his face properly, but the slouch to his shoulders, the way in which he thrust out his pelvis, was clearly meant to convey the message that he was cool and bad and not to be messed with. He also seemed young. There was a spindly lankiness to his figure, which appeared almost adolescent.

  She looked back at Angelface. ‘You guys are awfully concerned about my welfare. Why is that?’

  ‘My boyfriend says there was a murder there at the house, you know. Someone got slaughtered in the garden.’

  ‘You and your boyfriend must have been barely out of playgroup at the time.’

  The girl looked at her belligerently. ‘Me boyfriend’s mum still remembers. She knows a lot about murders and stuff. She reads in the paper about them and then she goes to the inquests. A real expert, is me boyfriend’s mum.’