The Wall

7

Were there more cameras? Moses glanced around. Not on this street. He retraced his steps a short way. Nothing. A little further. Back to the T. This was the boundary between the one- and two-storied houses. Still nothing. Had anyone seen him? Maybe at the entrance? In the other direction, he saw the back of a man in overalls. Someone working in a garden, out in this heat. The man was too far away to hear him. He was just turning on the mower. Noise. The exhaust blew a plastic bag toward the street. The man parked the mower without shutting off the motor, ran after the bag, and caught it as it spun in the air. His eyes then fell on Moses. The man froze for a second, bag in hand. Moses waved. The man waved back with his empty hand and turned back to the garden. As he himself turned back around, Moses caught sight of the next camera. Only a few meters away. It was small, attached to yet another streetlamp. And it was pointed right at him. This made it two.

Somewhere a car started. In second gear now, faster, the noise was drawing closer. The car was now in view, heading toward him. Moses hunched his shoulders and walked deeper into the subdivision, heading toward the wall at the river. The mid-range car drove past him, an older white woman at the wheel. Keep on walking, searching. He reached the last T. The street now ran right and left, parallel to the wall. The houses really did all look the same.

Systematically or instinctively? He should go to the right in order to check out the furthest back corner of the gated community, but he had a feeling he should head in the other direction if he wanted to find the house.

The lots along the wall were wider than the others he’d seen, with lawns and gardens along the front and both sides of the houses. Who was watching the footage from the cameras? And how many had been put up in here anyway? He had already seen two, so there had to be more. He heard hammering coming from one of the houses along the wall. Across the street, a laundry basket was sitting outside an open front door. Sounds from inside, some kind of rattling.

Moses kept walking.

He hadn’t seen a security shack at the entrance. Wherever the footage was being viewed, it probably wasn’t being done on site here. Was anyone at all watching the footage? He had heard of fake cameras being hung up for appearance’s sake, but weren’t these a little too subtle for that? Too small? Fakes were supposed to be larger and immediately noticeable.

The next intersection. The street to the left returned to the entrance, the one straight ahead followed the course of the wall. The Nahoon was much louder here. Not a large river, perhaps twenty meters across. Normally not very deep, especially now in the hottest part of the summer. A voice called out something. Beyond the wall. A fisherman maybe.

Wow, Moses stopped. He hadn’t been wrong after all. Here was another mailbox that looked like a miniature house, exactly like the other one. These were probably sold in some building supply store. His memory hadn’t failed him.

And this was finally the house he’d been trying to find. He was completely sure this time. He remembered those funny red and green curtains. “Brought from Europe!” his classmate had said. He had probably even mentioned the country. Moses walked up to the door, quickly scanned the area around him, and pressed the doorbell. It produced a high-pitched tone that dwindled to a screech. The battery was pretty much shot. Moses waited a few seconds before ringing the bell again. The skewed tone again. This could mean any number of things. The Boers were pretty lazy, generally speaking. The battery might have already spent several weeks on the shopping list, but kept being forgotten. Or the new battery had been bought days ago, but since nobody ever rang the bell, it just hadn’t been installed. Anything was possible.

But, Moses thought, another possibility was that nobody had been living here for some time.

Focus. If he couldn’t get help here, where should he go?