My taximan was hopeless. All his glowing maps and locators served only to disorientate him. He took me to squares where there were no taverns and taverns that were not on squares. He found three taverns that were on squares but had no orchestras. He kept pausing to consult his devices and speak to the control room.
At last, I began to feel drowsy. When we stopped at yet another crossroads, I decided it was time to go back. But before I could say so, a man stepped from the shadow of a wall and came up to my window. Papa? No. He was wearing a homburg and doublet, but the likeness ended there. Smiling broadly, without warmth. Perhaps it’s someone I met at the Fair, I thought, one of the countless pseudo-Papas, the advertising lookalikes and porn stars, the dregs of the Convention. But what is he doing here? And so shabbily dressed, with his overalls worn through at the knee.
Despite myself, I smiled back. And as I did so, he reached in through the window and took hold of my face. He had big, rough hands, and the broad fingers of a labourer, but his touch was gentle. He cupped my face in his palms, as if I were a child, and tilted my head as though he might kiss my brow. Then his grip tightened. His thumbs pressed into my eye sockets, his forefingers burrowed into my ears, the other fingers sank into my cheeks and probed the flesh below my jaw. He bore back as if he wanted to tear my face from my head.
He would have hauled me out of the cab had the taximan not pressed a button to close the window and lurched forward across the intersection. He clung to me through the gap, and was dragged along beside the vehicle, until his fingers tore loose and he fell away behind us.
The taximan stopped under a lamp and helped me staunch the bleeding. You can imagine how shocked I was. I shouted at the fellow for his stupidity and irresponsibility. But of course the fault is mine. I am the bungler. I would not let him take me to the hospital.
You should see what I look like! One of my eyes is swollen shut. My jaw is so sore I can hardly speak. I shan’t be able to eat for a week. Good thing too. I’ve had a bellyful of their protein and everything else.
This sleepless night gave me time to think. I wonder if all the travellers’ tales about this destination might be true. You know the ones I mean — I must not say too much — that they lie on principle, and eat their young, and fry strangers like us in the streets. I can well imagine it. They keep insisting that they are warm people, but their hearts are cold.
18:30
My dear, what would I do without you? I scalded myself in the shower and used all the staples and patches, as you suggested, and swallowed all the pills and smeared on all the creams, and got through the day’s business. No one was any the wiser. Are they used to seeing a face like mine in ruins? Or are they too polite — or dishonest — to say anything? This much our trade has taught me: appearances are everything. I cannot wait to get home. Please make sure Dr Shen can see me first thing on Friday. I need to be scoured, outside and in.
Dead Letter Gallery
Five of Neville Lister’s Dead Letters were shown on Alias at the Galeria Pauza in Kraków in May 2011. This exhibition was curated by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin under the banner of Photomonth in Kraków.
Advertising poster, Kraków, May 2011
Dead Letters exhibition, Kraków, May 2011 (Photograph by Marek Gardulski)
Neville Lister, Paris, 2011
L. Sylvain to Maryvonne Jourdan, Paris, 1978
Neville Lister, Laingsburg, 2011
M. Benadie to Basil Liebenberg, Laingsburg, 1979
Neville Lister, Göttingen, 2011
Karl-Heinz to Norman Ortlepp, Göttingen, 1977
Neville Lister, Amherst, 2011
D. Skinner to A. Gomes, Amherst, c.1981
Prison release form, Johannesburg, 1980
Neville Lister, Queens, 2011
Jimmy (James P.) to José Carvalho, Queens, 1980
Deleted Scenes
best kept alone
Sixteen hundred hours, Klopper thought, and wiggled his toes.
‘Tell me something, Bate: if these fugu fishes are so poisonous, how come they don’t poison themselves? Hey?’
Bate looked at the street. It seemed cold and grey, but that was because the glass was tinted. After a while he said, ‘So what’s going to happen to this guy?’
‘Who?’
‘The guy we’re waiting for, who the hell else.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We’re going to give him a medal.’
‘Very funny, Klopper.’
‘That’s me. Humour in Uniform.’
Bate turned his head slowly until he could see Klopper on the bed from the corner of his eye.
Fugu fish are best kept alone. They are more aggressive to their own species than to other fish. That’s what the magazine said. In Japan, Fugu rubripes is farmed for eating. The flesh is best eaten raw but it can also be fried or boiled with vegetables. Fugu fins or testes are good in hot sake.
on the way home (route 66)
On the way home we stayed in a motel off the interstate, another ten-dollar dive with red wall-to-wall and woodgrain wallpaper, and the room was so small you could lie on the bed and change the TV channel with your toe. Johnny Carson interviewed a man with a parrot that sang ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco’ and it made us laugh until we cried.
We had breakfast in some Denny’s or Roxy’s the next morning. I remember how noisy it was, how loudly everyone spoke. It used to bother me when I first came to America, but I’d gotten used to it over the years. The waitress brought bacon and biscuits, and eggs over easy with Cheez Whizz sauce on the side, and coffee and cream, and kept up a barrage of questions and comments over the clash of knives and forks. ‘I’m sorry!’ ‘Coming right up.’ ‘Is that right?’ ‘Gotcha!’ She said, ‘You’re welcome,’ before I could finish saying, ‘Thank you.’ A reflex, exclamatory patter of pacification.
While the busboy was stacking the plates, he asked: ‘Y’all on your way to the Allergy Conference?’
‘No, we’re just going home,’ Mel said with a startled laugh.
‘Well, good luck with that!’
wayfarer (hobbema)
My favourite museum is the one in the Hague. I was very taken with the Hobbemas, until I found a sheet of paper in a plastic box on the wall that said all the figures were put in afterwards. Apparently Hobbema painted his scenes without any people and the Hollanders were quite happy with them like that. But then the paintings were bought and taken away to America, where the new owners had to look at the empty landscapes every day, and it bothered them that everything was so desolate. So they employed other painters to add little figures on the canvases and they thought that ‘populating the landscape’ and ‘humanising the world’ made it look kinder and safer. Some of the added-in figures were quite clear, but most of them were so small and hidden I hadn’t even noticed them before, to tell the truth. And the painters must have been amateurs because the figures weren’t very well done, which is one of the reasons why I didn’t realise they were there.