Before I could take a shot, Janie was back with the denim jacket tied around her waist and a gaggle of kids pointing imaginary cameras, playing follow the leader.
‘It’s a village back there! You’d never say so, but there must be twenty shacks behind this wall, a whole shanty town in the middle of a suburb. I reckon there could be a hundred people living here. Do you want to take a look?’
‘No thanks.’
‘You’d get some great shots. It’s like the kasbah or something, all these twisty alleyways between the shacks, really beautiful. There’s one shack made of ten different materials — iron, hardboard, scraps of lumber, you name it — but the whole thing’s been painted eau de Nil. It’s an artwork. Have you been to Zanzibar? It’s like that, except the scale’s all weird because everything’s been reduced to fit on one plot. Maybe it’s three-quarter scale like Melrose Arch. It has that sort of charm, although it’s very different, of course, I don’t mean to suggest. When you’re done, you should look around.’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t want the inside story.’
‘But aren’t you curious?’
‘A little.’
‘What’s the problem then? Don’t tell me you’re scared.’
‘I’m allergic to drama. I can’t go poking around in the pitiful contents of strangers’ lives. Even the miraculous tales of endurance are too much for me.’
She gave me a look, in conjunction with a hand gesture that was half an insult, and went back through the gap in the gate. I was being indiscreet, I realized, this was another aspect of my interview manner I’d have to brush up on. Rule number one: Never speak your mind. I must remember to tell her it was off the record. A casual ‘OTR’ will prove I’m in the know.
Antoine was looking at me, almost, with the same disbelieving half-smile and empty-handed gesture, like a father wondering whether he really should embrace the prodigal son. Not that he was old enough to be my father. Down the bells of his colourful sleeves I could see all the way to his skinny chest. Was the suit for special occasions? Or did he wear something this beautiful every day? He was luminous. Fabulous. Fabulosity be damned. Prodigal. Now that’s a peculiar word. It means wastefully extravagant, and yet it seems to mean returned home.
I went back to the camera and he went back to telling me about the night last year when a mob armed with knobkieries and golf clubs had driven him out of his shack in Alex. No, not his neighbours, he said, he did not know these people. Except for that one from across the road and his brother. They had brought tyres and petrol and threatened to burn him alive. For the first time since he came to South Africa, he was glad his wife and children were not with him. He was lucky to get away with his life. With the clothes on his back, I thought. As he told how narrowly he had escaped, the space between his hands diminished until they were pressed together in a gesture of prayer.
Much later, when I looked at the photo and Antoine refused to meet my eye, gazing instead down the street, I was reminded of Klee’s Angel. He has always been with me, from the door of my room in a Yeo Street commune, to a notice board in Finsbury Park, to the wall of my studio in Leicester Road. I went to look at him again, to see if the resemblance to Antoine was fanciful. There he is, hurtling into the future with his big ears flapping, the furled diplomas of his wingtips raised in surrender, the unravelling scrolls of his hair in a tangle. His face is not turned squarely towards the past. He watches from the corners of his eyes. Even the Angel of History can hardly bear to look.
When we were driving again, she went back to my sense of adventure.
I had to defend myself. ‘Every day, I feel more and more like a bloody sociologist. All I’m capable of is making a survey.’
‘Whatever happened to the participant observer? You need to explore.’
‘I’m past that. Just going out for groceries is a mission.’
‘You wouldn’t believe how interesting that place is. I might come back and do a proper piece about it. Apparently there are people from all over Africa there, from ten different countries. I’m sure you could see it in the styles of the shacks. This woman told me it’s a little version of Addis. Or maybe Luanda.’
A brief, chiming avalanche of currency from the backpack like a fruit machine paying out. She opened the zip and took out the phone, then changed her mind and put it away again without answering.
‘Have you heard of urban exploration?’
Another frivolous new discipline, I supposed, like sky polo or extreme proofreading, but it was a serious thing. She had written an article about the urban explorers, men and women on their own voyages of discovery through the backwoods of contemporary life. As wealth and power ebb and flow through an increasingly urbanized world, she said, it’s only natural cities should begin to generate their own wildernesses. More and more places that were domesticated — warehouses, power stations, hospitals, hotels, theme parks, film studios — are outliving their uses and becoming derelict. Those that cannot be remodelled fall into disrepair, not going back to nature, exactly, but winding down into wilder, freer states. This is the New World of the urban explorer. Even properties that have been abandoned may be defended, mind you, and entering them takes courage, there is only so much you can learn on Google Earth. Working alone or in teams, the new explorers venture into run-down paradises with cameras and notebooks to enjoy their pleasures and chart their mysteries. I could look on her blog. The codes of conduct are strict: take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints. There are wonderful pictures on the web from Sheffield, Bucharest, Newark and a hundred other places, every bit as exciting as the views of Mars sent back by Viking 1. Images of the future, she said, this is how the world will be when the turbines of development finally seize and things begin to run backwards again.
‘I wouldn’t last a day,’ I told her. ‘I have the hiking boots, but I’m not intrepid enough. And I’m not sure we’re in the right place for this particular pastime. You’ll be taking your life in your hands if you break into a mothballed warehouse in Denver or Cleveland.’ I meant the industrial areas of Johannesburg, but the American cities echoed through the names more clearly than usual. ‘There are too many trigger-happy security guards running around. You’re as liable to be hurt by a militiaman who got his gun licence in a lucky dip — don’t quote me — as by some homeless desperado who wants your takkies.’
‘The homeless aren’t the problem,’ she said, ‘it’s the people with property you need to worry about.’
‘I suppose you’ve met a lot of homeless souls.’
‘I have actually. I did a piece on the Homeless World Cup in Cape Town.’
‘Always wondered about that. Do they put the players up in hotels or must they take their chances at the city shelter?’
She rolled her eyes.
‘No really, it’s a heartless question but a fair one. It’s about survival, which is your thing. Are the referees homeless too?’
My old friend Sabine called me after her divorce. By then her educational resources agency had grown into a little corporation supplying services to the sector. Human resource development, information technology, knowledge management. I’d done some work for her back in the twentieth century when the deal was IT centres in schools — my moody shots of kids at the keyboard did wonders for the annual report — but we had not seen one another since. Now she was single again and looking for company.