Sometimes I would dream while lounging on the pool furniture, arms behind my head, eyelids heavy and falling. Other days I would read, stocking up on South African history. Joburg history. The miners and the slaves. That sort of thing. Sometimes I would just stare out at the northern horizon and wonder how they were getting on with flight.
The twins operated in a parallel orbit to mine, staying chiefly housebound and focusing on food and maintenance. Andile and Javas would take turns in the kitchen, and often one of them would join me for a period in the garden or – when necessary – in wielding the knife on a chicken. Javas spent nights in his studio and woke just before lunch. The three of us maintained a pleasant mutual quietude.
Then the rest would arrive back from the base: Tebza looking frazzled and disturbed; Lillian and Fats arguing some point (take-off trajectory, flaps or fuel); Gerald trailing behind, arms full of the day’s supplies and equipment; Babalwa at the back, belly cupped in her hands.
I made sure I visited the base every few days. It felt important to be seen as part of the venture – as part of the team and all that. In truth I was relieved the farm had to be maintained and that there were viable tasks for me back home. The simulator hut was hot and cramped. With two people in the available seats and three more hovering around the edges of the plastic bucket that housed the dash and screen, it was a stuffy, hot and bothersome gig. The less I participated, the fewer reasons there were for me to be near the action, and so when I did visit I generally ended up kicking it with Babalwa just outside the hut, the two of us perched awkwardly on plastic pool furniture.
Cheers would rattle the hut after hours of silence. With each roar we grew closer to the idea of actually taking off. Even I, the sceptic, felt myself occasionally roused at the thought of the ability to break free of our domain. I pictured other small packs of people in different parts of the world attempting similar things. I imagined us crossing paths in mid-air, waving at each other.
Even when we were fighting – and there was always an argument of some sort on the go, to say nothing of the lingering Durban resentments – we were driven by an intention, by a goal. This was in marked contrast to earlier months, which had felt like a steady march towards complete stagnation or death. As a group we were now imbued with meaning and a larger purpose. There was, in a word, progress.
I don’t think Tebza felt very much of that. Towards the end of training, when regular touchdowns and landings were being achieved, he began to openly question his position as pilot. He had never wanted to be the pilot. He felt that Lillian and Fats had bestowed the position on him because of his computer addiction and his drive to establish the WAN – hardly, he said, the same thing as wanting to fly. He also said to me privately, on several occasions, that he was feeling extremely pressured. He would have preferred to be the training guy on the ground rather than the guinea pig in the air. I couldn’t fault his argument, but Fats and Lillian shut him down with the brute force of a fait accompli. Fats would pat him on the head or fake punch his shoulder and say, ‘Too late my son. You’re our pilot now. You’re our man in the air. The guy with the skills. Sometimes destiny is undeniable, eh?’ Or some other such fatuous rubbish.
Some nights I would push my head into his room to see Tebza slumped and drugged in front of his machine, listening to old broken dubstep beats, eyes drilling into the fractals on some retro reconstruction of a ’90s-era Windows Media Player. I would call his name, but my voice was unable to spark even a grunt of acknowledgement, let alone a reply.
So, at Javas’s Drill Hall studio I found peace of the sort I just couldn’t get my hands on anywhere else. As often as was logistically possible, I began to reverse my routine. Laundry first, then cow milking and general farm maintenance, followed by a run to Drill Hall and a long session in the midday sun, letting the warmth of the metal sculptures broil me as I leaned against the legs of the biggest one – who I had come to call George. I talked to George, running him through events in the house and preparations for the flight. He was a good confidant, always listening, always neutral. As the weeks of preparation drifted into months, I relied on him more and more to keep my mental balance in check.
‘You never know, Roy,’ Javas said as he stepped out from wherever he had been listening. ‘Miracles do happen. They could just as easily figure it all out as fuck it all up.’
I shot to my feet, shocked, and gulped a few times. Thankfully I hadn’t been gossiping.
‘Ag, moenie worry, mchana. I talk to them too. All the time.’ He drifted between iron legs, patting a thigh, kneeling occasionally to inspect the weld on a foot. ‘They’re like that, nè? The more you get to know them, the more they want to get to know you – your story.’
‘Strange shit’ was the best response I could come up with.
‘Ja. Strange shit.’ Javas took a seat at the feet of Julius, a fatter, squatter, meaner-looking creature. ‘This one’s my favourite,’ he said. ‘He’s a bit fucked up. Quite ugly. He lacks the abilities of the others.’
It was odd to hear him refer to the creatures so personally, as individual humans, in just the same way as I had been interacting with them. I sat back down at George’s feet. ‘George is my man,’ I said. ‘Something about him, I don’t know. He’s just… my guy.’
Javas smiled and leaned back against Julius’s fat, ungainly foot. ‘So, Roy, what the fuck is going on with you, son? Everyone is talking about how you’re drifting. Not involved. Et cetera, et cetera.’
My heart thumped. ‘You’re not exactly in the middle of things either, are you?’ I said.
‘Well, you’re right there. But I think, and forgive me, I don’t mean to insult’ – he smiled warmly to reinforce the non-insult – ‘that I’m a bit smoother than you. I don’t make people jumpy like you do.’
‘I make them jumpy?’ I wasn’t completely shocked by this, but still, it was strange to hear it out loud. ‘Must be this bladdy tooth.’
We roamed for a while around the flight and its potential for success or otherwise, and then further out to art and the Drill Hall and life and advertising and all the things we had, respectively, left behind. Javas talked straight at me, his words bouncing lightly off the roof. I was struck again by how articulate he was, by his ability to warm me up with words. Mostly, I was struck by his interest in advertising, a subject of little worth or interest to anyone else. He questioned me repeatedly about what I had worked on before getting involved with Mlungu’s, what my job actually was, who controlled me, who controlled the process, how much I got paid, and so on. I self-expressed, as we used to joke at the agency while mimicking a lactating breast.
Eventually I reversed the Q&A. ‘So you were famous?’
‘Depends on your definition,’ Javas said. ‘I mean, no one outside of these people’ – he indicated the statues and, I assumed, their associated industry humans – ‘would know who I was. Just artists. Buyers, you know. That stuff. So no, not famous. Not in the real way.’
‘But on the up, yes?’ I pressed on.
‘On the up. Ja. I like that. I was on the up.’
‘How much were you selling these for again?’
‘’Bout three bar, sometimes four, five, six even.’
I whistled.
‘Not a lot, Roy,’ he countered. ‘Each one takes more than six months to build. Hard cost is about eight hundred thousand rand. And a million today’s not what it was.’