I might have escaped their attention, had I remained frozen in my seat. But I must have risen spontaneously, meaning to intervene in Spilkin’s defence, despite everything.
‘Fuddy old barley!’
The strangers set upon me like a pack of wolves. Many hands seized me roughly. I wasn’t going to submit without a fight. I let them have it with a few epithets, the sorts of things that would ring in the ears for days afterwards. I kept my eyes peeled, too, in case there was ever an identity parade. As I fell, I saw Mevrouw Bonsma stoking up the boilers, and then ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ poured forth over the babewyni. Familiar faces, but trampled out of shape, tossed like leaves in the far reaches of the room, stuck to the wallpaper. Glory! Glory! Huge with the lid of the trophy on his head. Wessels — brandishing the crutch — ‘Boonzaaier!’ Raylene.
A storm of blows rained down on me. Fists, foreheads, kneecaps, elbows, heels. Hard bone under soft flesh. My spectacles, knocked sideways on my cheek, reduced my assailants to a blur. Yet by a fatal twist of optics, one lens was turned into a magnifying glass, and a single face came into focus within its frame: Darlene. They had wrestled me to the ground, and she was sitting on top of me. The bones in my chest cracked and splintered. I put out my hands to ward her off and clasped instead the swollen yellow bulb of her belly. Great with child. Spilkin? Impossible! And now, in all likelihood, gone for ever. Widows and orphans. But they were not even married. Before I could pursue this train of thought any further, my spectacles were plucked from my face and the world flew away. Climb every mountain … Ford every stream … Follow every rainbow … Hands were kneading my cheeks, pinching my chin, tweaking me, buffing me. My face felt cold. Then it went completely black before my eyes.
*
Merle.
*
My breath came back. I listened to its roar, to the buckled ribs squeaking, the throat rattling. Extraordinarily, I was still alive. The black gave way to grey, shot through with red. Blood in my eyes. I wiped them clear. I patted my head for gashes. Nothing gapingly obvious. One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock … Excrescences all present and accounted for. Pockets? Ditto. I felt around on the floor for my spectacles. A fuzzy teddy bear appeared out of the mist, weeping hysterically, and put them in my hand. Somehow they had come through intact.
The world fell back into focus. A circle of people around me, but keeping their distance, like onlookers at the scene of an accident, chattering among themselves, pointing, pulling faces. I got to my feet. An odd little man stood before me, a black man, some faithful old servant perhaps, who had witnessed the massacre. He was wearing one of the caps with ‘Boy’ written on it, and weeping inconsolably. He wanted to speak to me, but every time he caught his breath, he was racked by a fresh outpouring. I considered slapping him across the face — it was the recommended remedy — but he had something wrong with his skin. It was as thick as paste. Scar tissue. Wattles of mortified flesh at the neck. Had he been burnt?
Despite the disfigurement, there was something familiar about him. Could it be Eveready? No, he was taller. I studied the features, the gasping maw, the eyes brimming with tears, the dripping nose. And then it came to me in a flash that made me reel. It was Spilkin. And in the glare of that recognition, I saw something else: he wasn’t weeping at all. He was laughing.
I looked in disbelief at the wider circle. Then I pushed the spectacles up on my forehead with a numb index finger and let the lenses fall in front of my eyes again like guillotine blades. Mustering my spent energies, I put each face to the proof. There was Huge, as black as pitch. Nomsa with her wig on sideways, a few shades lighter, but black nevertheless. McAllister, an ’Enry, and a brace of Eddies. And they were black too.
I touched my own face and looked at my fingers.
Black.
*
I scrutinized without blinking. The Café was barely recognizable. They had turned it upside down. Nothing but black faces on every side. Who were the invaders? The newcomers? The old regulars? One couldn’t work out who was who any more. I felt abandoned by friend and foe alike.
The sea was spilling over the breakwater in the Bay of Alibia. The other walls were streaming too. What was this liquid? Some frightful solvent in which all things would float and dissolve, gradually losing their shape and running into one another. A solution of error. It was striking up through the carpet, I was soaking it up like blotting paper. Sharp little objects pierced through my soles, and my shoes filled with a prickly sludge of delenda.
I bloated and swelled. The trembling in my innards, which I had taken for fear, revealed itself as rage. A rage to disgorge this superabundance of error, to get rid of it once and for all, to blow my stack.
I erupted. I gave them a mouthful, the Amadoda and Abafazi, the shithouses (excuse my Anglo-Saxon) of the holey city of Joburg, the Rotary Anns, the Pump-action Bradleys, Mr Frosty and Mrs Sauce, the Bushbuck Rangers and the Crystal Brains, the bobbers, the peddlers, the stinkers. I poured it out upon them, the printer’s pie, the liquid lunch, the hasty pudding, the swill of tittles and jots, the gaudy Gouda, the Infamous Grouse, the Jiffywrap, the Oatso Easy, the Buddywipes, the Wunderbuddels. Items, one-eared: Vincent van Gogh … John Paul Getty III … Dumbo … innumerable teacups and coffee mugs. I was not in the habit of speaking in this fashion, of seeing, of saying disorder, of chaos, of coarseness, but I had lost my tone. Where were my cadences, my measures? My pages were out of order. To be Papenfus or not to be Papenfus? What do you call a man under a shroud? Paul. Names for dogs, should I ever acquire one: Riley … Puccini … Houdini. Down ~ down ~ down ~ down. The beast would outlive me. It was past my bedtime.
They fell silent. Ashamed of themselves. Mevrouw Bonsma stopped playing. Then there was nothing but the sound of my own voice. It made no sense to me, it was nothing but a long, fluent spewing, it made no more sense than water gushing from a hose. I watched the stream of sound, I saw bubbles breaking underwater. I looked harder. Words were floating to the surface, and I rose with them into the familiar air, and found my place. My ears popped and I could hear properly again. Could hear a new voice, which was really my old voice, replete with authority.