All One Horse

‘brother’

He cannot be discreet even if he wants to. Sounds travel a long way up the valley. Sometimes when you see the spurt of a smoke tendril it comes as a surprise not to hear the reverberating smack of an explosion a fractured second later. I know this is a roundabout way of knowing about distance. I hear the put put put of his ancestral motorcycle from afar. You’d swear a heart is thumping away in the ravine. Then I catch a glimpse of the sun shooting off his goggles as he takes the turn from the departmental road into the narrow track snaking up to our hilltop settlement. He’ll be stopping soon at the store facing the crossing to rev the old cycle, thump his fat buttocks on the seat and howl like a wolf — he’s forever scaring the storekeeper out of her wits, my brother, and she already speaks the dialect with a slumberous tongue like a cucumber. Now the motorcycle is labouring up the incline, coming through the gate, stopping as it were with shuddering chest, here he is. I’ve always thought it jolly the way he has Pegasus painted in flowing white lines over the petrol tank.

I must go back a little but it will not be an afterthought. I sense that I am to be the fleeting forethought, an eyelid moving. It could not have been the sun mirroring his goggles; it must have been my inflamed vision spotting darts where there was but conditioned expectation, the premonition that some welder was coming to solder my soul. Not a bad image — I should tell my brother about it. Better still: ‘soldering the soldier’s spoiled spirit!’ I remember now that it is a cool brooding day like this one. I must experience the present as if it were a memory. Memory of snow and of dust. Sun hidden face. Swallows swooping low with an unzipping of wings, ants feverishly dragging pale snippets down holes into the earth. There is a cold wind from the mountaintop. Storms building up just beyond the border, so Radio Truespeak announced this morning, and maybe some showers will blow over to break our drought too. ‘I’ve never understood how the authorities could permit you to paint a nickname on your official transport,’ I say by way of greeting. He pushes the goggled eyes up on his forehead, wipes a glove over his lips. ‘Damnation! You have no idea what a bitch this job can be. Bloody road between Uzbaq and the capital is blocked. Chaos, I tell you. The Squatters are on the march again. Flags and drums and fifes and those damn kids cartwheeling and ullulating. I had to come the Garg way. God knows what is taking the Law so long.’ He sighs. ‘And then just look at all this, will you? Work, work, work.’ He has unclasped the worn satchel on the back of the bike and is now riffling the content, the pig-eared files. Extracts a slim red one. ‘Here we are.’ He is looking into the file with furrowed forehead.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I say, do you carry your drink in that thing too?’

‘Here we are,’ he says. He is taking off a glove, wetting an index finger, solemnly clearing his throat. ‘Now lessee… your name, sir?’

‘Bullshit,’ I say, ‘Do you want to come inside?’

‘Don’t you bullshit me, fuckhead. Look I’m sorry, this is for real. Forget the rest. It’s, ah, official, I tell you. Damn. Lessee,A,A. B, B. C, Celli. D, van Dood Graf, nobleman, fat help. E, Eklô, so young still, would you believe it? F. G, Galien, Garbman Abdul, de Graaf Reinier, Gräfenberg Ernst. H, Hakuin, Hermes, Horse… It never stops.’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘J, Jagger Mick. K, Ka’afir, Koff. L. M, mumble Mfowethu, I’m sure that guy was not all white, an infiltrator from the other side, touch of sin among the forebears there. N, Nessuno Jan. O. P. Q. Q, Queen. R, Redman Charlie Truespeak. S, Story. T. U. V. W here we go, Watsenaam. Watsenaam Abe, Watsenaam Babe, Watsenaam Brother, Watsenaam Chuck Huntingdon, Watsenaam Nascimento. Are you Nascimento Watsenaam?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I am. Piss off.’

‘I am now giving you notification. Ah, the permit.’

He hands me a sheet of paper. All printed, just the name and first names and dates completed by hand, same somewhat blurred. This is to inform you that Council has decided that blank blank will be executed at the place of public death on the blank of blank in accordance with Decree 27 alinea 17 and 5. DO NOT RESIST THE LAW. WE SHALL OVERCOME. Dated, stamped, signed, countersigned or scrawled, illegible, stamped.

‘Sign here,’ he says, holding out a filthy register.

‘The language is not very ceremonious,’ I say.

‘Streamlined, don’t you know? But some of us still have to bruise our backsides on the same ancient bikes. Sloppy organisation. In ten days’ time, you got that? You must keep the notice, don’t foul up the works.’

‘Yes,’ I say.

I must go back a little. Loop the loop. Give my regards to the mirror. I look up the slope behind the house. Soon the leaves will change their hue. After the first rains the sheep will come on down from their summer grazing. There’s wood to be chopped, winter crops to be prepared over at the new fields. Words to be welded. If only it were to rain I could be ploughing. It’s been a dry summer. Ten days?

‘Look, I say,’ he says. ‘You’re best out of it. Today white, tomorrow black, so what’re the odds? I certainly don’t know. Let the ants make pigs of themselves with all that godflesh in the soil. It’s not our baby. That’s history for you!’

‘Yes,’ I say.

He has put the glove back on again and behind the goggles his eyes have an anxious stare. He touches my shoulder awkwardly. How much does one feel through leather, I wonder. He will now kick the bike to life. It’s not easy.

‘It’s been a dry summer, hey?’ he says. ‘If only it would rain. Watch it now, ah. Don’t go make things difficult for, ah, others. Don’t let the family down. You’ll be fetched and so forth. And don’t go trying what Mfowethu did, you know, stringing himself up, jumping the gun, what? Gives the country a foul smell, hah-hah! Fool, what?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Well, then,’ he says. The motorcycle’s stuttering.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘Brother.’