I look down at my coffee again and a huge spider has made its way onto the mug. How long had I been staring at the time? The spider is perched nervously on the brim, legs elastic, ready to jump, dive, feed, attack … I’d better not approach. I watch from a distance, grateful for the distraction from my stupidity. No tobacco, no music, no phone. Just me and the spider. Both idiots. It’s going to drown itself. I should warn it. I should save it. But I can’t bring myself to pick it up.
‘You gonna die,’ I mumble, but it doesn’t seem to hear me.
I really needed that coffee. But I’ll let the spider have it. I’ll move onto something stronger. At least it’ll die a rich, aromatic death. It’s a good way to go.
There’s nothing quite as comforting as wine on an empty stomach. Trying to maintain my calm, I walk to towards my wine rack and see that it is askew. Three bottles have been removed. No, four. And the bitch took the vintage.
Fuck.
Maybe something even stronger then. I open my corner cupboard and take out my only bottle of cognac. She wouldn’t have known to look here. Plonking three ice blocks into the Bisquit, I already feel consoled. Pouring the gold down my throat, I know that reality can be kept at bay a little while longer. I light the second cigarette, ignoring its scream at the approaching flame. I drag on it mercilessly. It squeals louder and I’m immediately overcome by a coughing fit. I cough her clean out of my system and, through the coughing, the memory comes back like a surge of phlegm.
She strolled into my house all fresh, smelling of success. She must’ve come to the pub freshly showered. Cream and cologne on clean skin. Damp hair on pink cheeks. Marshmallow lips still warm from the steam. All crevices soaped, perfumed and moisturised. I vividly recall her sex-swept hair flowing down her pale neck. A woman airbrushed by God. Was I so charmed by her? So emotionally vulnerable? Just stupidly drunk?
I look at the spider, now paralysed and starting to sink. I told you you were going to die. ‘Time of death: 10.45,’ I mumble. As I kill the second cigarette, I feel it trying to kill me. Overwhelmed by another wild coughing fit, I can’t get a breath in. The sound of my cough fills the house and a sharp pain pierces my chest. I can’t reach the phone. I stumble to reach my bag, which isn’t there, to get my asthma pump and I remember that it’s gone. The pain in chest is debilitating and a black haze starts to cloud my peripheral vision. It blurs the kettle, the mug, the spider and the clock in what looks like black smog. With no more oxygen left in my lungs, I close my eyes and join the spider in finality.
When I awake, I look at the clock and an hour has past. I’m wheezing like an emphysema patient on my deathbed. Jassis. If she wanted to kill me, she could’ve been kinder about it than stealing my fucking asthma pump. I’d rather have drowned going down on her.
I scratch around in my drawer to find my spare bank card. When I find it, I slip it into my jeans pocket, where I discover a loose R50 note. Thank God. I go outside and stare at the gap in front of my house where my Polo used to stand. The tief stole my car. I hope you crash and die as a result of my broken handbrake, you thieving bitch.
Pacing each painful breath, I walk to the ATM and slip in my card. I wait as the machine takes longer than usual to respond. When it eventually returns my card, I see no cash sliding out of the machine. My bank slip reads, ‘Insufficient funds’.
I lick my lips. To my desolation, I can still taste her. With the last R50 stashed in my jeans pocket, I buy a new pack of smokes. Robbed by a white girl. I wouldn’t have thought.
Sure as I am about what needs to be done, I feel my hands go limp.
‘I’d like to pursue criminal charges against a woman I met in one Blue Hearts Pub, as provided for in terms of Act 51 of 1977. I want to launch an application to the High Court in order to obtain an interdict against the aforesaid.’
The attorney raises an eyebrow at me. Perhaps, he’s just tired of seeing me. Can I be blamed for my misfortune? He takes a form out of his drawer and sits down.
‘Have a seat, ma’am. You will need to provide a list of this woman’s offences. What has she done? Be as specific as you can.’
As I speak, the attorney scribbles shorthand on the page and fixes me with a ridiculing stare.
She stole my phone, my iPod and my personal computer;
This was after I invited her into my home in an attempt to pursue contact;
She left my house in my car which she has failed to return;
In addition to the stolen electronics, she has also stolen my cigarettes;
I am also missing four bottles of vintage wine since her visit;
She has taken my handbag with my personal effects and medication;
The absence of my medication has nearly resulted in my death;
With my phone, personal computer and wallet, she got access to my accounts and cleared out my savings;
Heartbroken, I pause.
Needless to say, she has caused me immeasurable anxiety, pain and suffering.
I don’t have the energy to tap my foot on the floor while waiting for a response.
‘I’ll see what I can do for you, ma’am. Do you know the woman’s name?’
With that question, I realise that police procedures will be impossible. A backlogged court and a nameless thief. My stomach is empty, my car is gone and I don’t have money for a drink. I kick an empty soda can on the pavement.
I am done with women, I decide and walk home in silence.
Fire
Steven Otter
The heat pulsing off the sides of the thousands of iron structures around her does nothing to slow her pace. More intense even than the sun beating down on her head, it has the opposite effect of quickening her stride, only punctuating the distress that has sent her on this late-afternoon walk from the train station.
The world before her is in slow motion, except for the noisy creaking and bending of overheating metal, and the rapid, yet faint, beating of her heart in her ears. Her breathing is laboured.
Wispy, yet as erect as a pole, she continues on, holding her breath as she passes a rotting animal corpse somewhere down a narrow alley. Suddenly, as she rounds the bend into the road that runs behind the school, the panic in her chest is too much to keep bottled up and she gasps as it flows up through her neck and then into the blood vessels in her face, automatically opening her tear ducts.
Frantically she breathes deeply in and out to bring her blood pressure down as she passes the container-barber’s where a young man sits in the doorway, lazily smoking. He has dreadlocks and is puffing on a cone-shaped dagga joint.
‘Mama?’ he says, a look of mild concern slowly coming over his face. ‘Are you arrright?’
‘Ewe, I am fine,’ she lies.
She struggles on past the smoky meat stand that makes her nausea worse, the shebeen with the red quart bottle standing on the plywood counter top and then further along the potholed road dwarfed by the formidable Hottentots Holland peaks in the distance above it. All is quiet, except for the ringing of the barber’s concern fading in her ears.
I am not used to silence in these streets, she thinks. Where I wanted to find the sound of life, I have instead found silence. Why are our young girls not skipping and our boys not playing soccer and cricket in the road? Why do they hide from the heat? It is only heat, after all. It is not fire.
Where are the daytime drinkers? she wonders. I have seen only one today, urinating messily against the wall of a shack. And the unemployed youths, why are they not leaning against the gates and fences of the homes of friends, whistling as I pass? Catcalling the freshness of womanhood, of young life, the freshness of my face, and my neck, and my breasts.
Maybe I am wearing evidence of marriage, she thinks, lifting a hand to touch her head, the absence of the headscarf incorrectly suggesting availability.
What about the Friday tsotsis? On the one day I am prepared for them, when I have nothing to lose, they do not show up!
Perhaps the girls and boys, the sun drinkers and
car watchers, the unemployed youths and the Friday tsotsis have been told the news. Maybe they know what I know. If they do, does that mean they are simply going to look the other way? Just like when the tyre is burning, when we close our children’s eyes with the hard pads of our hands and look to another corner of the street? Or like when the journalists come and ask us what we witnessed?
She realises that her blood pressure has subsided and that she is walking faster.
The heat is increasing all the time as the neatly dressed woman with the boy’s hips glides gracefully on. Like a curtain in the wind.
When one moves one’s hips, the water bucket falls, her grandmother cautioned her. I should have listened to her, she thinks. ‘A person who will not take advice understands when trouble overtakes him’; Makhulu had a proverb for every situation.
The cold tears of panic have already dried on her cheeks, but she can still feel their scabby saltiness. Lifting her wide-apart eyes to the sky for a second, she notices for the first time that thunderclouds have developed swiftly.
She lifts and twists her bottom lip slightly. It cannot be long until it rains. She knows that whatever happens, whether it rains or not, whether hailstones the size of minibuses crash from the sky – or not – it will have no effect on her.
I made my choices and now I must live with them. Or do whatever else is necessary.
She looks again at the enormous thunderclouds, which are building layer upon layer of water in the sky above her. For a moment their sheer size makes her feel small, yet almost alive.
On she walks, along the dusty kerb, past a quiet furniture stall, where the old bearded store owner sleeps on a rough bed on display under the vast sky, then past the vacant Sunday church and, on the other side of the road, a second deserted school.
Where are the children? It must be school holidays. She does not relate the question back to her own school-going child, who is being looked after by her aunt. It is as though the artery between her and the six-year-old has been severed. The bleeding has long since stopped; the wound has all but disappeared.
Suddenly all that exists below the giant, darkening clouds, even her thoughts, evaporates from her head. She may not feel the intense heat directly, it is not a reality to her, but she understands that it has become so hot that the silence is almost absolute.
The wind teases the bottom of her dress but the material is too heavy to reveal more to weary eyes than the back of a withered calf. Here and there on the dusty tar around her, an empty plastic wrapper and bottle, a corner of throwaway cardboard and a dirty cigarette butt, are nudged by the breeze.
Then she sees it – a spiral of cloud that is too close by, too dark and ominous. She quickens her pace, scenting a waft of smoke on the breeze. As she gets nearer she can make out the flames gently licking the air above the roof of a shack like a lion tasting its kill. The steady roar of the fire increases in volume as she gets closer. She can see it rapidly gaining momentum, heat producing heat before the restless wind.
The clouds move to the background; the fire has become her centre stage. Her heart beats faster and more strongly as she walks on toward the blaze.
An audience is forming quickly, positioning themselves in a bend of wide road where the fire cannot reach. People are walking from all directions but most are coming from Mew Way and some have their work satchels over one shoulder.
Paraffin stoves explode – bang! bang! bang! – as she arrives at the back of the crowd and stops walking. She stands and watches, consumed by the scene.
The fire has become a beast that no one can tear their eyes away from. The sight and sound of it are hypnotic. No cliques of family, friends or neighbours have been formed, just different members of a community thrown together by calamity. She stands there, feeling some comfort in numbers. It does not matter to her that she is alone in this crowd – she feels a part of this spectacle, a part of something big that involves everybody here.
She realises that the fire has actually made her feel better. At least it is over there, ruining the lives of others, instead of mine.
The paraffin stove explosions continue. The fire is jumping wildly from shack to shack, pushing back the frontline of bare-chested young men tossing bucket after bucket of water into the flames from the roofs of neighbouring homes. Although she silently acknowledges their courage, it is clear they do not stand a chance against the fire.
‘Here comes the helicopter,’ a man beside her shouts, looking into the sky in the direction of the Indian Ocean as the ear-splitting whine gets louder.
It is the first time she notices him. The stranger is short and stocky. The little nose and mouth and narrow eyes look strange on his round face. He is wearing a security guard’s uniform with shiny black shoes.
‘I was wrong,’ he says, ‘It’s an aeroplane.’
She does not know what to say. It is as if she has lost the ability to speak. Can I only feel pain? she wonders. Has my soul already abandoned me?
She turns away from the little man and looks at the aeroplane swooping in towards the centre of the flames. It is unreal. Whoever is flying that plane must be crazy, out of his mind. She cannot see into the cockpit; the plane is moving too fast through the thick smoke. Is it a white man there in the sky above a township on fire? For a moment the plane actually disappears into the furnace completely and even she holds her breath. Then he is gone, the crazy white man and his noisy machine, and the crowd is sprayed with water.
‘Here comes another one!’ shouts the little man.
He is not the only one enjoying himself; the crowd is whooping as the second plane drops towards the eye of the fire. The howling climaxes as the plane comes out the other end.
‘Never made a difference!’ yells the man.
She nods, seeing for the first time the fire engines and hoses, police, traffic department and other officials that now make the crowd appear smaller than it is. Everything is being controlled except the fire, which is determined and has nature on its side. The heat has made the fire angry; no one can have any doubts about that.
As the minutes after the departure of the tiny planes pass, she realises that the fire hoses alone will not put out this fire. To make matters worse, it is going in the direction of the canal, into an area where the roads are too narrow for the fire fighters and their trucks.
She can see that some of those who have lost their homes are in the crowd with her. She can see by their faces. They have that look of resignation – ‘We must accept that these things happen,’ their look says. As she looks around at these faces she feels relieved that she is here, standing in this crowd, watching this fire with these people. I am not alone, she thinks. We are together in this. The fire is our common enemy. I will do what everybody else does and accept. Not only because I do not have any other choice, but because God put me in this position. He made the rules and I have lived by them. I cannot see why my undying faith has led me to this fire, but He knows the reason.
‘They’re back,’ announced the man, pointing enthusiastically in the direction of the two planes.
‘It took them so long to turn around.’ His voice is heavy with accusation. ‘It is too late; the fire is going to win. This is going to be a humanitarian disaster.’
He says ‘humanitarian disaster’ in English, slowly and clearly, for effect. He isn’t finished speaking yet.
‘Eish,’ he adds. ‘Really, a humanitarian disaster.’
‘What was it before the fire?’ she asks him, the anger suddenly too strong to keep inside.
‘What do you mean?’ he is studying her closely.
‘Nothing,’ she says.
‘No, what are you trying to say?’ he asks again.
‘Never mind.’
‘Where are you from?’ he asks her.
All of his attention has moved from the fire to the strange woman beside him. He has turned to face her full-on.
‘I am from here,’ she answers.
‘Has your home ever burned down
in a fire, sister?’ he asks her.
‘No, my brother,’ she answers. ‘But let me tell you something I have learnt in my short life – not all fires have flames.’
The little man with the round face watches her go. He does not follow her. It is not that he does not want to, he has the urge to walk after her, but he has heard enough. Besides, it has begun to rain.
She is thinking about the rain too as she makes her way out of the back of the crowd. The rain is hitting the tar before her with such force that it is bouncing back up to waist height. If it continues like this for a few minutes it will put the fire out. Nature decides these things, she thinks. Or God, perhaps.
The water falling from the heavens is being sent on its way with ear-splitting thunderclaps. She lifts her handbag over her head. The rain is warm, even hot, and makes her think of Idutywa. She hardly notices that she is wet through from top to bottom. Instead, she finds comfort in the familiar smell of the thunderstorm.
As a child, she and her twin sisters would run naked through the rain, ignoring the warnings of their grandparents. Now she can smell the cow dung and thatch of her grandmother’s hut. Her grandmother built it with her own hands.
Wearily, she makes her way through the revolving gates and in the direction of the steps. The rain has long since stopped, but everything has a plastic sheen in the late-evening sun.
She is in a courtyard of sorts. Looking at the bolted gate of the security office, she sees that no one is on duty. She is not in the mood for questions.
There is a half-moon in the clear sky. The clouds and wind are spent and the evening is noisy with the sound of cars crossing chaotically at the busy intersection below.
She begins climbing the stairs. She counts each step … eleven, twelve, thirteen missing, fourteen, fifteen missing, sixteen … She stops to rest, leaning against the railing with her back bent. The panic is still in the back of her mind; I am getting used to it, she thinks. When she reaches the top she stops with her hands on her knees, out of breath. She is at the highest point for many kilometres around.
The Ghost-Eater and Other Stories Page 12