Dust Devils (8 page)

The Boer was speaking. "Okay, time to tell you what I want. For all the help I've given you." Theron gulped at his brandy and Coke.

Inja sliced into his steak and took a mouthful, chewed, eyes fixed on this arrogant white pig. "There is still the bail hearing tomorrow."

"Relax. Dell isn't going to get bail. I've got the prosecutor and the magistrate by the balls. They'll do as I say."

"So," Inja said. "What do you want?"

Theron laid his knife aside, lighting up a cigarette, blowing smoke into Inja's face. "There are only two things a man wants: sex or money. And since I don't want to fuck you, chief, it's gotta be money." Laughing.

The Boer looked up as the waitress arrived with an Irish coffee. Theron flirted with her, winking. Watching her ass as she moved through the tables. "How much you wanna bet me she'll write her phone number down on the check?"

Inja said nothing, chewed, working his way methodically through the steak. Covered in the sweet sauce the whites loved, hoping it didn't trigger the sickness that lurked out in the shadows.

Theron switched off his smile. "I want half a million. Cash."

Inja stared at him, speaking around his food. "You are mad. And where must I get such money?"

"Come, Shaka. Don't play coy with me. Talk to the minister." Inja chewed, saying nothing. "I know you and him go way, way back. You guys were in exile together, running around in the bush with your AKs." Filled his mouth with steak, pointing his fork at Inja. "Down here in the Cape he can't throw his weight around like in the rest of the country. You fucken need me."

Inja knew the white bastard was right. In this province run by whites and half-breeds, they scorned his chief. Mocked his many wives and Zulu customs. Thought of him as a savage. Inja's appetite was gone. He pushed his plate away.

Theron puffed on his cigarette, leaking smoke through his nostrils like a donkey on a cold morning. "This is a nice meal and I don't want to ruin it with threats. But you know what I know. Tell your minister he's getting a bloody bargain." Washed the meat down with his Irish coffee.

Inja watched as the dead man wiped cream from his lip.

Dell lay on a bare mattress in the dark. The two drunk farm laborers who'd shared the holding cell with him had been kicked loose. One of them'd had diarrhea and the stench of the blocked toilet hung in the air, acrid and dense.

A lawyer had come up from Cape Town a few hours back. The son of a friend of Dell's from the old days. The father, a political activist who'd morphed into senior partner at a massive legal firm, hadn't bothered to come himself. The boy – Jeremy? Jerome? – told Dell to "chill" until the bail hearing in the morning. Like he was talking about catching a wave at Clifton. Assured Dell he'd be kicked loose after the hearing.

"A no-brainer," the kid had said.

Dell was exhausted but when he closed his eyes he saw the black truck. Saw the Volvo tumbling into space. Heard the screams from inside. He sat up, holding his bandaged head.

A car sped by outside, pumping Bob Marley's
Redemption Song
and Dell was back in 1994, at a party the night of the elections, South Africa caught up in the fever of freedom. Apartheid was officially dead. Nelson Mandela was in power. Dell was joyous and optimistic for his country, but felt sorry for himself.

His marriage had ended. A love affair that had been fueled by student politics and rebellion had run out of gas in sight of the finishing line. So, standing among a crowd of revelers on the lawn of a house in a Cape Town suburb, he felt sour and a little old, at thirty-three, to be single again.

Dell went into the house to help himself to a glass of nasty boxed wine from a table lit by melting kitchen candles. He found himself staring at a big oil painting. Presumed it was oil, the meaningless swirls applied to the canvas in thick gouts.

"Like it?"

He turned to see a girl of maybe twenty, breathtakingly beautiful, her skin the exact color of caramel, he remembered thinking. Wild hair halfway down her back in black curls.

"No, I don't actually," he said. "I think it looks like fecal matter." Trying to impress her, knowing he sounded like a dickhead as he said it.

"That means shit, right?"
Rrrright
. The accent neutral, except for the roll of the 'r' .

"Yes. And you? Do you like it?"

"Oh, I hate it." She sipped her wine. "But it paid my student loan for a couple of months."

"Jesus. Sorry."

Laughing, the candle flames repeated in miniature in her almond eyes. "Don't be." She was leaving him, and he didn't want her to go. She cast a last look over her shoulder. "I like your critique. I'll use it."
Crrritique.

He saw her at an exhibition the following summer. Took her for a drink. They moved in together three months later. Married the next year. Dell had thought of himself as a happy man. Had thought his wife was happy, too.

He lay back on the mattress and felt the sheaf of e-mails still folded in his pocket. He stood and walked over to the filthy, lidless toilet, filled to overflowing. Fought back his nausea and tore up the pages, dropped them into the bowl. Was taken by a wave of dizziness and had to put a hand to the wall to steady himself. Saw the bodies of his family in the morgue. The memory of the charred flesh hit him and made the stink of the shit seem sweet.

Disaster Zondi found himself in a community center in one of those suburbs in the north of Johannesburg that looked exactly like twenty others. Desperate people moping around a coffee urn on a Sunday night. He'd tracked down the address online. Googled sex addiction.

The moderator called the meeting to order and the group scraped plastic chairs into a circle. Zondi's the only dark face in the room. People started talking. Stories of lost marriages and lost fortunes. Familiar stories.

It had always been easy for Zondi, finding casual sex. It had a way of finding him, truth be told. He'd walk into one of those fancy Jo'burg bars – a place pretending that it was in New York or Berlin – not even thinking about a getting laid. Order a drink, ignoring the desperate men around him who tore off women's clothing with their eyes. Then Zondi would look up and there she'd be. The blonde. His female opposite. The yin to his yang. A smile. A few words, and then off to her place for the transaction. Zondi had two rules: no one came to his apartment, and he never stayed the night with his pick-ups.

Lately, he'd leave the sleeping woman and get into his BMW. Still restless. Find himself driving through the night toward the inner city. A place that had imploded in on itself from poverty and crime and decay. He'd see the feral black whores who lurked outside buildings that looked as if they'd been shelled, the women locking onto his smart car like heat-seeking missiles.

He'd call one over and sit staring out over the apocalypse while the woman went down on him. Hearing the smack of her mouth on the condom, catching the bushfire stink of meth or crack in her hair. When he didn't come, she'd bitch, want more money and he'd lay a banknote on her and let her go.

Last week one of them had pulled a knife on him. A long blade with an ornate bone handle. The kind of thing white men had once used to carve Sunday roasts. The whore was so blown on crack she could hardly see and he could have taken the knife from her, but he gave her money and pushed her out of the car. Drove away knowing that he had to stop this before it stopped him.

Zondi came back to the room, unconsciously making eye contact with a wholesome looking blonde sitting opposite him. He'd never seen her before, but he'd met her a hundred times. Another one curious to merge her whiteness with his blackness. Doing a
TopDeck
, they called it in South Africa, after the white and dark chocolate combo sold in local stores. He looked away. She didn't. Zondi shifted in his chair, but still felt her eyes on him.

The moderator got to a gaunt man, called him Horst, and asked him if he was ready to share. The man shook his head and the moderator moved on. Zondi had the feeling that this wasn't the first time it had happened.

A desiccated woman in her forties spoke about how her serial adultery had caused her husband to commit suicide. She wept. The blonde kept on forcing eye contact. Zondi got up and walked outside. He stood out in the dark, breathing in bougainvillea and eucalyptus from the garden, wishing that he smoked. The man named Horst appeared at his side.

"You would maybe like a drink?" he asked in a German accent.

"Yes," Zondi said, suddenly realizing that he would like nothing more.

He expected the German to suggest a bar in a nearby strip mall, but the man led him to an aging Mercedes parked not far from his own car. Horst slid in behind the wheel and Zondi took the passenger seat. The German produced a bottle of Scotch and a couple of foam cups from the glove box.

He poured two drinks, handed one to Zondi. "
Prost
."

"Cheers."

Horst flattened his drink and poured another. Held the bottle up to Zondi who shook his head. "May I tell you something I have never before told anyone?" Horst asked, in his fussy, overprecise English.

"Go ahead." Zondi knew how to listen. It was talking he had a problem with.

Horst told him that a few years back he had been on holiday in Thailand, Phuket, with his wife Lotte and two children – Dieter an eight-year-old boy and Dorothea a fifteen-year-old girl. One morning he left them on Patong beach, saying he had to return to the hotel to make a business call. Instead, he walked to a brothel, a ten-story building a couple of blocks back from the beachfront.

On the ground floor of the brothel around twenty Thai girls were displayed behind glass, like merchandise, with price tags hanging from their necks. The cheaper ones dressed in jeans and T-shirts, the more expensive in cocktail dresses and high heels.

"So I end up on the tenth floor with a girl maybe younger than my daughter. On the bed she can put her legs behind her head, very supple. While I am fucking her she makes funny noises. Reminds me of the sounds my first Volkswagen made on a cold morning, when I could not start it." Horst laughed, throwing back his drink.

Zondi balanced the cup on the dash and cracked his door, wanting to get away from this man and his pornographic ramblings. The dome light flicked on and he saw the haunted look on the German's bloodless face.

Horst put a hand on his arm. "Wait, please. This is where it gets good."

Zondi paused, the car door still open.

"So we are fucking and I hear another noise. A loud, unbelievable, smash of water." He laughed. "Ja. The tsunami."

Zondi stayed in the car. Closed the car door. Gave the man back his shadow.

The German saying he ran to the window, a red condom still hanging from his wilting dick, and pulled away the heavy drapes that blacked out the room. Had a narrow view between buildings up to the beach where his family was. Saw the water and the cars and the trees and the bodies. Saw the ocean suck back and the second wave hit.

Zondi lifted his cup and emptied it. The German telling him how he had wandered through the devastation. Cars washed into hotel lobbies. Naked dead people in trees. Days later he identified the bodies of his wife and son, rotting in a makeshift morgue. His daughter was never found.

"So," Horst said. "You are my confessor."

"Why me?"

"You looked like a perfect stranger."

Horst laughed and so did Zondi. He opened the door again, stood up out of the car. "Thanks for the drink."

"You won't come back here, will you?" Horst asked.

Zondi shook his head and closed the door. As he walked away from the Mercedes, his fingers found the folded fax in his pocket. He thought about the girl in the photograph. Thought about the place he hadn't been back to in years. Home. He used the remote to unlock his BMW, turn signals blinking. Alarm chirping like an urban birdcall.