The Memory of Water

³⁹ THE SUN SINKS

The fountain is fizzing and the late afternoon sun lends a peculiar glitter to the birds of prey, making them look ready to pounce.

I shake my head. Aspen, for God’s sake. I picture Mrs X dangling on a ski lift, sipping Moët in a golden winter suit, making kissy noises at Dasher, poking his ear-muffed head out of her trembling handbag. As I leave the property an uneasy feeling stirs. The one I should be used to by now. The one that tells me someone is watching me.

There is a man standing by the Merc. I lift a hand to shield my eyes from the setting sun and blink at him. It is Edgar. We both freeze, then he turns and runs. Without thinking I take off and follow him. Anger propels me forward and I gain on him but I’m unfit and he is a fast fucker and after a few hundred meters, he turns a corner and is gone.

I lose my temper, dig my phone out of my jeans pocket and hurl it onto the tarred gravel.

“FU-U-U-U-U-UCK!” I scream with what little breath I have left. How the fuck? How did they know? Panting, I goose-step back to the Merc and kick the tyre.

“Fucking FUCK!” I scream. The shoes on the people around me are stuck to the pavement. Fucking tracking system on the car. Fucking smartphone GPS. I jump on it. Then I stick my hand under the car arbitrarily looking for some kind of wire I can pull out but come up with nothing but a greasy hand. I want to throttle someone; preferably Edgar. The people who are stuck to the pavement start walking again, slowly, keeping a wide berth. No wonder they don’t like strangers. It is clear that before I do anything else I have to get the tracker off the car. Only in South Africa would a clapped-out car like this be fitted with a tracking system. Fucking insurance companies, fucking criminals. The sun sinks.

Being a kind of outlaw myself, I wonder who would agree to remove the system from the car. There is a township nearby called Duduza. Call me a racist but I reckon that’s my best chance. I get in the car and before I do anything else I uncap a new bottle of whisky I don’t remember buying and have a good long sluk. I start driving and after taking the first few turns, I see the grey Datsun parked on a grass verge, behind a Privet hedge. There is a shouty laugh in my head, à la Mrs X: Ha! Haha! as I jump out and let down all four of Edgar’s tyres. As I drive away I think, well, at least I hope they were Edgar’s tyres.

It should be a ten-minute drive to the township, but without GPS it takes me half an hour and when I get there it’s dark. I see people frowning at me when I cross the boundary. Despite it being 2011 South Africans are still vaguely surprised when they see a white person in a township. Ironic, because it is quite possible it is one of the safest places one can be, because when you are so obviously out of place you are protected by your very conspicuousness. Except in Soweto, I guess, where there are so many whites nowadays I’m sure the tourists feel scammed.

Duduza, despite its name, has a brutal past. The black people who lived in Charterston were forced to ‘resettle’ here because their close proximity to the white town of Nigel made the government feel uncomfortable. The same government named it: a Zulu word, meaning comfort. I remember seeing Duduza in the news in the 80s as violence flared up – boycotts and marches – one in particular ending in what was supposedly the first mob necklacing in the country.

I drive on the sandy braille roads set between the shacks that hover on the edges, squatting on the red soil. There is the large heart of Duduza, which has tarred roads, schools, pretty gardens and streetlights, and then there is the overspill in every direction, a sprawling informal settlement. My money is on the shack dwellers for what I have come for, so I keep to the dark, smoke-choked radius, dodging drunken pedestrians and street dogs with glowing green headlights for eyes. I weave slowly ahead, hoping to see someone dodgy-looking. A young teenager with a torn shirt flags me down and I roll down my stubborn window.

“Heita brother,” I say.

“Dagga?” he offers. “Tik?”

He is thin and his skin is ash-dry.

“I need someone to help me with my car.”

“Blow job?” he blinks. I cough in shock, and shake my head.

“I need help with this car. I’ll give you money if you show me where to go.”

He looks worried and glances side to side. Probably thinks I’m a pervert, or a cop. But at the mention of money he opens the door anyway. Poor bastard.

As he climbs in, I can see how nervous he is. He slaps the dashboard and smiles. “Nice car!” he says. The stink of poverty fills the cramped space. His anxiety makes him animated: he motions with his hands and grunts to show me the way. We drive deeper into the darkness. I look over at him every now and then, trying to gauge how truly fucked I am. He has scars on his cheeks.

“This house,” he says, “here!”

It looks just like every other shack we have passed. There are lots of people milling around. I take a deep breath. When driving in here I thought the best possible outcome would be to do this job quickly and cheaply and then get the hell out. Now I’m hoping that I don’t get knifed. We get out of the car and I lock it, then on second thoughts I open it again and grab my bag, slinging it over my shoulder. We walk towards the house and before we go in the young man puts his hand on my chest to stop me. He motions for me to wait outside. I look around. People are glancing at me, some chuckling. The smoke in the air makes my eyes burn. I look down and try to stay out of trouble. I feel like a prat in this dinner jacket. Thank God I don’t have the Jaguar. Despite my circumstances I can’t help feeling this is an experience I’d like to write about. The feverish energy in the smoggy air, the young tattered boy. Between this and the taxi rank in downtown Jo’burg, which feels like years ago, I’ve really got some good material. I’m glad I have travelled all over the world for the sake of my writing but realise, now, I have largely ignored the dirtygritty beauty of my own country. Perhaps things do happen for a reason. Perhaps after this disaster of a year I really will have some good stuff in my pen.

The youngster comes out, trailing a handsome man behind him. He doesn’t look anything like a criminal. He walks right past me and up to the car, sizing it up.

“Hi,” I say, offering a hand. The man lifts his chin at me.

“You want to sell?” he asks.

“No,” I say, “I need…”

“It’s a good car, easy to sell. But not a lot of money.”

“No, I want to keep the car,” I say, “It’s my father’s car. I need to keep it to get home.”

He looks annoyed and whacks the kid hard on the back of his head, shouting at him in ambush language.

“Stop!” I shout. “I’ll pay you.” I take out my wallet and shake it at him. “I’ll pay you to take out the tracking system.”

“Tracker?” he says.

“Yes, take the tracker out, and I’ll pay you.”

“Five hundred,” he says.

“So you can do it?” I ask.

“Five hundred,” he confirms.

I look in my wallet. I only have four hundred and change. Plus I need to put petrol in the tank to get back to Jo’burg. And I need to pay the kid.

“I only have two hundred,” I say, “Can you do it for two hundred?”

He clicks his tongue at me and says something I can only guess is not complimentary.

“Please,” I say, grabbing him forearm.

“Nice watch,” he says. It takes a moment before I register what he has said. I look down at the wristwatch Eve gave me. Worth thousands, but that’s not why it’s my most precious possession. I close my eyes, sigh, undo the clasp and hand it over. He puts it on straight away and admires it, flashing his teeth at me.

“I’ll give you the rest when you’re finished,” I say. While he fetches his tools I slip the kid R100. He hops. The man gets to work on the car. The youngster hovers and learns. The man switches on his miner’s headlamp and starts inside the car, near the dash, then hoists the Merc up with a jack in jerky motions so that he can get underneath. I back away, looking for somewhere to sit for a few minutes. I have another long sip of whisky and sit with my head in my hands.

Out of nowhere time freezes in a big white flash. Then there is red and yellow – only then does the shattering blast strike me deaf. I am on the stony ground and there is no air. I can’t feel my arms or legs and for a terrifying second I think they have been blown off until I lift my leaden skull to check and they all seem to be there. My hearing trickles back but the screams I hear are dull. I roll my numb torso over and get a mouthful of sand. My brain has short-circuited from the shock. Finally I stagger to my feet where I feel the heat in the air. I am almost knocked over by people running past me. Some stay behind: wailing. Others are singed and sleeping. The car turns from a hot orange bloom into a black, smoking shell. I walk away.