Running through Alex was an existential exercise I never got used to – which was why I did it so much. As alien as it felt to be stranded in Houghton, Alex reminded me of the essential alienness of my wider life. My pre-life.
There was anger and regret and tension and bruising back at the farm. I avoided it all.
When I eventually emerged ready to talk, make eye contact, and so forth, it was to greet Tebza as he pulled into the drive in the 4x4 we had left for him on the Durban beachfront.
‘Thanks for the note,’ he said. ‘Very considerate.’
‘Sorry, things got out of hand. We had to leave. Fast.’
‘Fine, fine.’ He shrugged. ‘Little freaky being abandoned, but I cope.’
‘You find the blue flat?’
‘Nah.’ He shook his head, clearly disappointed. ‘I mean, ja. Crack, coke, pills, weed. But not what I wanted.’ The scar wriggled as his cheek moved. He looked like a dealer, or a hard-times man – one of those guys who could do anything, be anything. He looked older than he had before, and even less like a broker.
‘Shit. Really?’
‘All of the above. But nothing else. I went flat to flat for a full day, mfana. Fokol. Nix.’
Two weeks later Lillian and Gerald roared up next to Tebza and me as we were walking up the driveway to check on the cows. Lillian leaped out of the Toyota. ‘Guess what?’ she asked excitedly, bouncing on her tiptoes, hands behind her back, beaming beaming beaming. Tebza and I looked at each other suspiciously. He sighed. ‘What?’
‘We have just found’ – Lillian made a sweeping, unveiling motion, a matador fooling the bull – ‘a complete flight simulator! Like the ones they use in the movies!’ She pulled me by the sleeve and I expected her to show me the thing in the back of the bakkie, but there was nothing – she was dragging me to the vision in her mind. ‘At fucking Waterkloof.’ Her American drawl was suddenly marked. ‘Same place we’ve been a hundred times. Don’t know how we missed it, it was in this shed type of thing. I dunno…’ She was babbling at high speed, her hand still clutching and pulling on my sleeve, tugging me in no particular direction. ‘When I think back, I guess I must have thought it was a shed or something. It looked like it should have had tools in it.’ Gerald had disembarked by this stage and was standing next to her, quietly radiating a similar high energy. ‘You know what this means?’ Lillian was bouncing on her toes again, her boobs and ass moving in excited asymmetric harmony. ‘Do you know what this means, Roy?’ she repeated. I smiled, wishing she would calm down. ‘It means we can fly!’
I looked at Tebza, all question marks.
‘All we have to do is hook up some power and we can start using it.’ Lillian was still firing at a million words a minute. ‘We thought about trying to get it into the van, but it would never have fit. I reckon we’ll only need, like, twenty portable panels and we can power up that whole section.’ She stopped, cast her eyes to the heavens like a Brazilian soccer player and ran off to the house.
Gerald shrugged. ‘Here we go,’ he said as we followed her to the house. ‘Here we fucking go.’
Days later, once the excitement around the simulator had ebbed, Babalwa told me she was pregnant, as if I didn’t know.
She knocked softly on my door one night, hopped onto my bed and let the tears run. I asked her what type of tears they were, and she said after the Durban trip she wasn’t sure. Only thing she definitely knew was that at a higher level it felt right, even if the father happened to be a domineering prick who fucked other women on the beach pretty much in front of her.
‘He know yet?’ I guided her over the age-old, rocky path.
‘Sure. We found out properly a while back. I went to the chemist and found a pregnancy test and—’
‘So what happened with the Lillian thing? What’s going on?’
‘Eish. I mean, I dunno. I mean, I think I know…’ She took my hand. ‘Roy, I just wanted to apologise. For the rape thing. I don’t know, I don’t know what it was. It just frightened me, I guess, the whole thing, the animalness of it. But I know, in my heart, I know you’re not a rapist. You didn’t rape me. I know that.’ She pushed at the cuticles on her entwined hand with her free one, sorrowful. ‘I think I just scared myself, that’s all. You know? With what I was a capable of, and then I started to rationalise and… you know… you do know, don’t you, Roy?’
I tipped my head.
‘You told Fats this? Is that what the Lillian thing was?’
‘He won’t believe me.’ More eyes, more regret. ‘He thinks I’m in love with you or something, or, like, I’m addicted to you as a father figure. Shit like that. Every time I try to explain he just talks over me. Like I’m a child.’
‘A naughty child.’
‘Ja. A naughty child.’ She batted teary eyes at me and waited for redemption.
I gave her the platitudes she was looking for and she eventually squeaked back out, pulling the door shut like a teenager. The latch clicked, and I was alone. I felt suddenly like I had on that first night in Houghton, pitifully small, stuck in a spare bedroom like a little boy. I looked around my room. After all this time I had barely occupied it. It was essentially in the same condition as when I had arrived, save for the addition of a computer and speakers. The MBA books sat waiting still, as expectant as on my first night.
Pitiful.
The others had all fully occupied their parts of the house. Beatrice, for example, had converted her wing into an empire. One needed permission to get through the front door, behind which cascaded various rooms and offshoots, all with specific functions. Her hallway included framed copies of her MBA certificates and company awards. Her bedroom lay recessed in the far corner, north-facing, naturally.
But me – I was just waiting. Marking time as usual. I thought of my corners of the house I had shared with Angie, the little areas clearly my own, which were just as spare as my current abode. As if I was denying the most basic human need to nest. As if nesting was just never for me. Maybe that was why Babalwa had jumped ship so fast. Maybe I just couldn’t provide the nest.
I was still at least partially in love with Babalwa. Our PE time had faded, but part of my half-toothed, jagged consciousness was still locked into her, especially after I was let loose for the mighty Fats. I was jilted, and I still felt the pain. I found myself dreaming odd thoughts about a life together with her, alone again somewhere, coexisting quietly, holding hands occasionally. That sort of thing.
For her part, Babalwa was clearly comfortable using me as a counterpoint (physically, emotionally, intellectually) to Fats. While patting her hand I wondered what the hidden agenda of her visit was. I also questioned how in touch she was with her own agenda-setting. The best liars, they always say, believe they are telling the truth. How much belief was there in Babalwa at any one time?
The next morning I took off in the opposite direction of my traditional route, heading this time for the Drill Hall, in the city. Javas had his studio space there. It was where he built his monsters. Since the Kruger trip I had visited the studio several times. I was compelled by his creations. Being in their presence gave me a kind of metaphysical comfort.
The Drill Hall was an old military station converted into a quasi-cultural space featuring careful brickwork and commemorative plaques telling struggle and other stories. It sat in the middle of Noord, the biggest and most aggressive taxi rank in the country.