Dub Steps (32 page)

His last little pieces were all personal refuge. Javas was disturbed by how the giants had become such literal symbols of us, the parents, which they were never meant to be. He protested their use outside the expo centre, and ultimately it was his lack of power in the debate, I believe, that hurt him the most. The arguments with Sthembiso went long into the night and there was never a chance of victory, or even compromise. The giants were us. We were the giants. The expo centre was our story, told again and again and again until we were living dogma, referred to reverentially, but also completely in the past tense. We – the creatures who had purposefully spawned this future – were removed from the present.

And so he welded a true set of us, each piece the height of a water bottle and none bearing even a passing resemblance to its source. Gerald, for instance, was a warrior about to strike, spear raised, face wild. ‘The Gerald we leaned on,’ said Javas. ‘The Gerald we needed.’

Javas died in his studio, razed to ground by a welding flame turned rogue without its father, who had had, we assumed, some kind of stroke or a heart attack. The whole cottage went down. Everything built so carefully gone in an instant. Andile trawled the ashes for what remained and moved into the granny flat on the property next to mine. We are old-age neighbours.

She is the complete opposite of Fats. It’s as if her man’s death has given her more power, more energy. A sharpened vision. She’s brighter and more direct than she used to be. Faster to grab subjects and make them her own, less likely to tolerate the bullshit we all know is bullshit.

So that’s us. Four very old people waiting to die. The young
tolerate us at times and venerate us at others, depending on who wants what when. I smile at them all and play up my doddery oldness whenever its appropriate, but the truth is there aren’t many of them I would trust, and there are fewer even that I like. They are enraptured with themselves and the strange forces that are driving them.

A lot – but not all – of my distaste is rooted in their youth. I am of the era when kids of fifteen were kids, not parents and lovers and politicians and scientists and the creators and destroyers of things. Thus I perceive my progeny as dangerous. Their willingness – well, eagerness really – to march onward scares me. And then there are the miracles and the cult of their religion, the details of which I have studiously ignored but the impact of which is inescapable. They are in the thrall of what they call their science, but which I – being the age I am – recognise as superstition and greed and a complete inability to discern hocus-pocus from reason and fact.

Yes, I have raised all my concerns, and no, they have not listened. They do not have the ears. They have eyes instead. Eyes only for more masts and towers, for the addition of more stations and the expanding, stretching, throttling grasp of mobile reception.

If I had any integrity, instead of nattering inanely to Matron’s breasts I would be laying my Madala experiences on the line for all to consider in the rush of their progress, but whenever I think seriously of it I realise that I am too lost in the fog. I swirl between the poles of many possible realities. I am, in other words, no longer completely linear.

Internally, of course, he exists and speaks and guides. A constant, none-too-subtle narrator in my head. He has never left.

I tried to tell Babalwa, just before she went. I held her bony little paw and began a long ramble, intended to lead us to somewhere near the CSIR, intended to open some kind of conversational door that I could slip through, bringing Madala behind me, but she was wise to it. To me. As she always has been.

‘Roy,’ she said, smiling faintly, Jessica Tandy in her last Hollywood years, ‘let it go. We’re nearly there now. There isn’t much more. We have done it. Everything that was possible. You
can let go now, Roy. We are there.’

Near-death bullshit, obviously. The meanderings of the terminal mind, but still her eyes were strong and at the time it made spiritual, death-like sense. And so I stopped and bottled what I needed to tell her, only to regret it intensely when she had actually gone. Fucking Babalwa.

‘You know she always loved you,’ Fats said, sobbing on my shoulder.

‘The little bitch.’ I patted his head as gently as I could. He snorted a river back up his nose and choked on it as he laughed, muck spraying back out onto my shoulder.

‘Seriously, Roy. She asked me to tell you. Again. How much she regretted …’

I stroked his greasy old hair vigorously and patted his shoulder. ‘Nah nah nah …’ I looped it like a soothing baby mantra. ‘I know it, I know it. Knew it years ago.’

One of the kids – the doctor – told us it was some kind of pneumonia that took her. ‘But at that kind of age,’ he tutted and shook his head. There was no need to explain. We all smiled hopelessly and let him go. I wondered where and how he had studied. How any kind of knowledge could possibly have taken shape already in that little head. I marvelled also at his white coat – the arrogance of it.

Anyway, that was a few years ago and now there’s just me and Camille, with support from Beatrice and Andile. Gerald was lost up north many years back, and Fats is mostly mad. He spends his time wringing his hands and looking in the folds of his wrinkles for his wife. Recently he started charging the corners, like Tebza.

Camille sits in the sun as it breaks through the trees. Generally she does this until shortly before noon. In summer she seeks out the dappled patches, using the shade to make sure her head is protected from the heat. She moves systematically through the morning to catch the optimum mix of dapple and sun. Every now and again she’s forced to retreat into the shade to cool off. In midsummer she’ll lie in the shade while making sure a paw or two has basic
contact with the sun, like she’s lightly touching a cable to a battery. In winter she hunts the heaviest rays and is resolute. She stares directly into the source and captures all of the available power on her chest. She maintains a permanent blink, her eyes paper-thin slits against the glare. Thereafter, depending on the type of day, she’ll find somewhere to pass out. If the sun is absent she barely rises at all, lifting her head only to eat.

I’ve tried to mimic her in my later years. Minimum fuss. Maximum utility. A strong warmth and stroking orientation. After much experimentation I can confirm that it is a good life. A simple life too.

At this advanced age there is no larger meaning for me. I have done all I was ever going to do – and perhaps a bit more, thanks to the novelty of circumstance. I see the world as far bigger, more frightening and more strange than ever before. Today, the simple notion of moving beyond the outer perimeter of the farm is as exotic and strange as one of those French movies. Something fascinating to contemplate, to swirl around in the mind, but not ever to actually get involved in, or really understand.

I didn’t expect to be so benign in my last years. I pictured myself forcing death to wait, somewhere beyond the gate (ah, the fantasies of middle age). Now that I am here I understand that the search for sun and warmth has as much value – more even – than any other endeavour. This I have learned mostly from Camille, who is absolutely calm in her enjoyment of each day, of each rotating moment within it.

Of course, as the sun’s rays heat me I toy with life after death, life on other planets, the various options thrown up by Madala’s muddy presence. As my body temperature rises and my skin warms and my insides glow and I watch Camille, shining and pulsating in the sun, anything – any damn thing – seems not only completely possible but really quite likely. In a world where this kind of warmth can infiltrate beings such as cats and humans, what, ultimately, is not possible?

But then the sun moves and I find a blanket and she finds a heap of something to bury herself in and the potential of the
morning fades and by the end of it I accept that this is probably all there is, potential aside. In the afternoons my mind runs at high speed through the memory banks, throwing itself back into life. My heart touches the strange and formidable shape that was my father and then courses roughly over the mystery that was my mother, memories blurring so fast that they become a tidal wave of sensations, cascading over and over each other.

I wipe the tears away with surprise. I am always surprised. I think of Angie, wife of another age. My angry, fighting wife. I am struck by how badly I treated her – how willing I was to lash. Oh, the fights we had. The savage, ego-ridden fights. Embarrassing. Humiliating – I now see – for both of us to have sunk that far. I would, I think as I stroke Camille’s white fur, really value the opportunity to go back and put my hand on her cheek and let it rest there in the love I genuinely did feel for her.

But I can’t.

Matron was layered. She moved through the world and her tasks in it – walking me, wiping Fats’s ass, dealing with the boils and pimples of life – via the external, functional layer, which was crisp and neutral and resolute. You couldn’t shake her circumstantially. In this incarnation she had the ability to disperse calm as if handing out pills. Her presence was, in itself, the pill.

But the longer I knew her – after months, then years, of shuffling by her side – I came to recognise the complexities. On internally sunny days, she was an innate optimist. But when the clouds came, she reverted to fear. Matron, in the dark hours of self, was extremely skittish. Not specifically afraid of this or that, but frightened in general. Of the world around, of the people and of the state of her own little heart.

On Thursdays, church days, holy days, the beat would drive, volume right up, bass cranked, from the early hours, incessant. I was always alone on Thursdays (maybe a visit from Andile or Beatrice, maybe not), and Matron would invariably return in her most delicate incarnation on the Friday. Over time I easily recognised the particular set of her jaw. The grind. Also the fragility of her person. Her lacklustre approach to food, her tendency to lose concentration, the conversation, the activity. Fridays she would flicker and twitch. The exterior motions were consistent, but the right kind of idea would hit her behind her eyes. Once hit, she would scuttle for cover.

Example:

She had her clipboard against her hip and was dressed in a conservative pair of brown office slacks. Her feet were, I still remember now, strangely stockinged inside brown open-toe office loafers. We were considering the height of the bed.

‘Check. Is low, Roy.’ She stepped back to consider it properly,
then moved forward again and kicked the base. ‘You OK? Sho? Not easier if higher?’

‘Ja, maybe. But then if I stop trying, if I stop working at things like getting up, soon I won’t be able to. So maybe height is good. Like exercise?’

Matron stopped. Suddenly she looked terribly, terribly young. The skin around her eyes was stretched to a confused kind of smooth. A twitching, chemical smooth. I wanted to reach out and touch it. The cheek. ‘Is that so crazy?’ I asked.

‘Crazy? No!’ She snapped back into focus. ‘Nay. Clever mebbe …’ Now she drifted again, thinking ulterior thoughts. ‘Ay, askies, tata, I’m kinda everywhere. I been tinking so many things. Den when you talk like that – bout effort being good and such – ut just make me tink dem more.’

‘What kind of things, dear?’

‘Ag, nuttin. You shouldna even have to bother.’ She consulted her clipboard.

‘Try me, you’d be surprised.’

Matron stared through my eyes, still young, still flickering. Calculating. Then she pulled her glasses from her afro and held them between us. ‘I been strugglin wif dese. Wif the big guy.’

‘What about them?’

‘Fixed hours. Everyone. Every day. Compulsory. You ken mos. Four-hour minimum. Normally is not my jol. I don come close to decisions. I jus do. But last night dey argue while I walk past and he call me in, like some kinda experiment. Start hittin me with all dese personal questions bout wot I want and wot I believe and how many kids I’m plannin for next two years. I got real bad uncomfortable.

‘I know we not supposed to ask this shit but I start tinking bout wot if de were options. Udda kinds of options, ken. Wot if rules not the only ting. And then I kinda sensed he sensed, ’cause he stop with questions and jus stare at me for a long, long time, in front of all da others, so dey all starin me, an now, I dunno, I jus feel different. Nervous. You know, proppa nerves. Like I done summin wrong. Only I don tink I have. Unless tinking is wrong. And den I
tink mebbe it is. So I guess … I guess I jus feelin nervous. And den I tink bout havin to wear these’ – she waggled the glasses and then returned them to her fro, checking their position for balance and solidity before carrying on – ‘and I resent as well. Like a bit angry.’ Matron shrugged, about to cry. She breathed deep and rumbled on. ‘An also da beat. Da beat an pills. Is hard to keep going all the time. Dis I know you know, nè?’ She chuckled, too nervous to look at me. ‘He so hectic bout the beat. Bout the dub thing. He won even let the kids mix de own trance. Even if ut fast and hard like Schulz. Only wot he say. An def no other beat. Neva. Neva neva neva anudda beat but we all know dere’s more. Much more. Everybody know but is scary to say. To risk, yes? Like jazz – we got lotta jazz in your house, tata. Udder tings too. Everybody know. But the beat he won’t stop. Neva. Any time anyone even tink of it, he blitz mad with English and the Zambians and the dub. Scared. Fridays most of all I feel scared. Shaky. Even when dey slow it. The down stuff, also the same. Just slower. Same beat. Shaky. He control it all. Always.’

‘Who do you love?’ I asked without thinking.

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, where do you go when your heart is hurting, or worried, or fearful? Is there anyone who makes you feel safe – emotionally safe?’

Her eyes twitched, flicked. She peered at me as if for the first time. ‘Love? Like in books? Movies?’

‘As in the twins. Andile and Javas. For example. They loved each other.’

‘Nay. Neva. They say it’s myth. Like democracy. Mebbe ut work, by accident, but not really true. Summint that explain sex and fucking, which we don need to know now.’

‘Well, it might be something to explore. Love. As far as I ever knew it was quite distinct from sex. Involved in sex, maybe, but by no means definitely. When faced with real confusion, it can help to speak to someone who knows your heart.’

‘Who you love?’

‘Me? Well I struggled a bit in that way. Later, like now, now that
I am where I am, I look back and I can see who I loved. At the time I wasn’t able, though. I just lived with it. The confusion. It became part of me. Not necessarily a great thing.’

‘An now? When you look back?’

‘I loved them all, of course. It’s easy to say that now. When you’re old you love easily. But now … well, Babalwa, of course. But Beatrice too. English. And Sthembiso. Always Sthembiso …’

‘Really? Sthembiso?’ Her eyes were widening, alert, worried. ‘But he keep you here. Locked—’

‘Locked up? No, my child. I mean, yes. Of course. He keeps me here. He has his reasons; he needs certain things from me. Fears other things, maybe. But the locking up? That was me. I put myself right here, long before he had any power or ideas or anything of the sort. I am my own jailer. Always have been.’

Matron cried. The clipboard fell half out of her hand before she caught it and then put it back against her hip. Then she faced me again, tears running. I reached out, took the clipboard and put it on the bed. Then I pulled her into my old musty chest and hugged the girl.

She sobbed into me – sobs of the young. Sobs of the innocent. I rubbed her back and cooed and clucked into her sweet-smelling afro. After a long time she pushed me away, slowly, and looked up into my craggy old lines. ‘An you, tata? Wot bout you?’

‘Of course, dear,’ I replied. ‘Me, I am full of love. For you most of all. Sadly, though, I don’t think I’m a long-term option.’

‘No, Roy!’ Matron grabbed her clipboard off the bed and pulled it to her chest. ‘You don say that. You not allowed.’

‘Yes, ma’am!’ I laughed, took her hand and tried one last time. ‘Seriously, though, you need to think about it. Your heart. Don’t let it overflow. If you’re feeling things, you need to share those feelings, discuss them, express them. Don’t make my mistake. Don’t think you don’t need love.’

‘Ag tata, I tink I just need a good fuck.’ She said it without a trace of humour, or irony, or anything. The words struck like iron.

Then she led me to the bathroom, where we discussed the slipperiness of the tiles.