Homing (15 page)

Before she left, she gave him one of her cameras, the less expensivea cool, successful one. “It’s old, but it’s a good camera,” she told him in a new voice, a cool, successful one.

“Are you sure?” He turned it in his stained hands. His eyes seemed to have lost their translucence. They failed to move her.

Anna touched his cheek with a finger.

Yes. You should take more pictures.”

By which she meant: now watch.

Mrs Engelbrecht was not what you would call a sports fan. When her husband was alive, they’d followed the rugby, but she’d lost interest in
TV
in recent years. These days, she preferred to sit and play cards with herself on the balcony of her one-bedroom flat. Patience. Clock patience.

Not that there was much of a view. Long ago, you could see the sea, but that was before they built the Waterfront – and of course, now, the giant soccer stadium across the road. That was quite a business. The noise, the construction workers hanging around, the traffic! But, in truth, the neighbourhood had started changing many years before. So many restaurants popping up along the main road. Girls on the pavements at all hours, prostitutes she supposed; and loud music from the bar on the corner. Mrs Engelbrecht never went out at night.

But she did not feel alone. There was Luki, her dachshund, to keep her company. And Elizabeth, who lived down in the tiny basement storeroom and cleaned house for several of the residents, and who popped in most mornings. Mrs Engelbrecht could not afford to pay her much – but, then, there was very little to clean. The old lady barely ate, barely dented the mattress of her bed. At most, there was a film of milky tea left at the bottom of a cup, some crumbs of bread and cheese. Really, Elizabeth came to check that her employer was still there, that she had not fallen or faded away to nothing in the night. She would sit on the balcony and read the newspaper out loud to Mrs Engelbrecht, whose eyesight was no longer good, and then go on to her other char jobs.

Normally, they’d skip the sports section. But the upcoming World Cup was front-page news, and today there was a huge headline: a player from the French national squad had disappeared. There was speculation about hijacking, abduction.

“My word,” said Elizabeth. “He was here – right here! They were practising here at the stadium, and then he was gone, just like that.”

“Well, really,” said Mrs Engelbrecht. “I don’t see why they’re making such a fuss.”

“Because he’s special,” said Elizabeth, reading. “He’s a big, big star. Look.” She folded the paper in two and held up the photo. A blurred face, a white smile.

“A black man,” observed Mrs Engelbrecht, who could not make out much more than that, what with her eyes.

“Ja,” said Elizabeth. “But French.”

Mrs Engelbrecht clicked her tongue.

But Elizabeth would not let it be. She frowned at the picture and ran a dark thumb over it, a gesture halfway between a stroke and a rubbing-out. “Maybe the skollies got him,” she said. “Maybe they thought he was one of those Congolese.”

Mrs Engelbrecht clicked her tongue again. “Poor chap,” she said, narrowing her eyes against the sun. Down below, she could see a crowd of people walking across the intersection, dressed in red: the colours of some team or other. They started singing, in ragged unison, halfway across.

“Ja,” said Elizabeth. “Can you believe it.”

Mrs Engelbrecht left Luki’s walk a little late that evening. Shadows were forming and the streetlamps were coming on, and she felt a tension: there was noise in the street, a lot of people drifting to and fro, many languages mixing at the pavement cafés. She found it all troubling.

She took Luki round the block to the old church, where the dachshund often did its business on a grassy corner, away from disapproving neighbours’ eyes. The lonely side street was darker than most. As she waited for the little dog to finish, she glanced over her shoulder.

“Come, my girl,” she said sharply, tugging on the leash. Turning, she was startled by a flash of colour against the church stonework: lime green, shining in the light of the streetlamp. It was a man, slumped up against the side of the building, half-hidden from view by a small flight of steps.

That in itself was not such an unusual sight, round here. Often one saw a homeless person, or a child, wrapped in a rough blanket and jammed in a corner to sleep, or someone half-dead from drink, a foot jutting out into the traffic. But Mrs Engelbrecht, who had been a nurse in her younger days, always felt uneasy about leaving a body lying; whenever she could, she would sidle closer, peering, trying to discern the rhythm of breathing. She considered herself a fine judge of states of consciousness.

With some stiffness, she bent herself over the supine form. He didn’t look like a street person. He was too well-fleshed, his hair clipped short and neat. His clothes, she decided, were also too good. Some kind of silky top, track pants, bright white running shoes. There was a gold chain glinting at his collar. This man, she decided, was not drunk; she could smell nothing on him, no sweet fermenting odour. Nor was he completely well.

Luki touched the figure’s cheek with a wet nose. The man moaned and turned away from the dog’s kisses. His eyes came open, wet spots in the dark of his face. He had a long face with deep hollows under the cheekbones, a high forehead. Black eyes under heavy, soft-looking lids. Perhaps it was those tragicomic eyes that made Mrs Engelbrecht think: French. He certainly did not look local. Too big, too dark.

She wrenched the dog away from the man’s face. “
Sies
, Luki!”

The foreigner pushed himself upright, putting his back against the wall, and said something softly in a language she didn’t understand. Mrs Engelbrecht thought it might be French, but somehow thick and chewed-sounding.

Night was falling. She should not be here alone, talking to a strange, if glossy, black Frenchman. If that was what he was. It was one of those times when she wished for an additional sense, for dog-nose, bat-ears, for more clues to the situation. But she was just an old lady.

Just then, she heard the distant wail of a vuvuzela: one of the soccer fans starting up. It roused her to action.

“Are you all right?” she asked the man. “Are you hurt?”

He put a hand to the left side of his head and held it out in front of him. His long fingers shone wet in the streetlights. He asked her a question, and his voice, like his motions, was rapid and attractive.

She clicked her tongue. “Just a little blood,” she said, in the sternly jovial tone of the nurse she’d once been. “Don’t jiggle around, you’ll make it worse.”

Luki lifted her front paws and tried to lick the man’s hand, but he pulled away with a murmur of alarm.

What to do? If she had a cellphone, she could phone an ambulance. But she didn’t, and anyway she didn’t know the number. They’d changed it years ago.

“You’ve hit your head,” she said, recalling her training. “Let me see – let me see your eyes.” Without thinking, she reached out and took his face between her hands.

If she’d been younger, and more in the world, perhaps she would not have done so. She might have seen the blood and recoiled. But she was from another time, when blood was just blood, was something to be staunched and sponged away, with bare hands if necessary. She searched his eyes, but they were so black in the shadows that she could not make out the size of his pupils. He let her hold him in position, docile. She should ask him questions. What year is it. Who is the president.

“What’s your name?” she tried. But he just stared up at her, unblinking. Trusting.

A bead of fresh blood leaked from his hairline, tracking crookedly down into his right eyebrow. He winced and touched his head.

A vuvuzela blared again, closer this time; his shoulders jumped in fright, and then he laughed and exclaimed.

“What?”

“Football,” he said, smiling. He pressed one long-fingered hand to his chest. “Me. Football.”

Mrs Engelbrecht sat the young man down on the edge of her bed. When she switched on the overhead light, he flared, vividly coloured. His shirt was not green at all but a fierce buttercup yellow; his skin was deep, deep black, his running shoes snowy. And his blood was extremely red. It was caked in his eyebrows and smeared on his shirt, across the number 7 on the front. Red fingerprints where he’d wiped his hands. He focused on her finger when she moved it left to right in front of his nose, although his gaze remained dreamy.

In her tiny bathroom, she filled a plastic ice-cream tub with warm water, clouding it with a dose of Dettol.

The Frenchman was up again by the time she got back to the bedroom, swaying on his feet. Luki was positioned in front of him. Mrs Engelbrecht, carrying the water, nearly tripped over the lowslung dog.

“Sit,” she said to the man. “Show me.” She put the basin down on the bedside table. Then she gently reached up – he was tall – and pressed her soft old hands to his shoulders, manoeuvring him down again onto the bed. He sat with his hands flat on his thighs.

“Let me see.” Again she put her hands to his head, rolling his close-cropped skull forward. His hair was coarse against her fingertips. The wound sliced along the side of his skull and went behind his ear. It was quite deep at the back, bleeding down into his collar. Gently, with the damp corner of a face towel, she dabbed at the tender groove, cleaning it out. It looked like a knife cut, narrow and sharp-edged; but perhaps he had fallen against something. She squeezed a little Betadine ointment out onto her fingertip, and he bent his head to her touch like an obedient child.

Luki had fetched her ball. It was a yellow plastic one from the supermarket, too big for her small jaws; she liked to nose it around the flat, bouncing it off walls and furniture. Now she rolled it forward, up against the man’s feet, and stood waiting. He did not react. Mrs Engelbrecht saw that his eyes were closed.

“It’s quite a deep cut,” she said, “but you won’t need stitches, I don’t think.”

He kept his head bowed, his hands wound together between his knees.

“What happened?” she asked. “Was it the skollies?” It was Elizabeth’s word, not one that felt easy in her own mouth – not one that he would understand either, being French.

Disarmingly, he laughed, and then spoke a long, rapid sentence, opening his eyes wide.

“Take, take off,” she interrupted him. She mimed with exaggerated gestures for him to remove his shirt – then dropped her hands, embarrassed. She must look like a pale, ageing monkey, scratching in her armpits. But the man seemed to understand. He pulled at the back of his shirt, getting tangled up so she had to help it over his head. A waft of warm scent and sweat enveloped her face. He was lean, with a hard stomach and clearly defined arms. An athlete’s body. There were no other wounds or scrapes on him. He gave her a smile, scratched an itch on his bare shoulder. Yes, she thought, he is European, you can tell. Something about the gestures. Quite elegant, really.

She pictured Elizabeth’s face then. How angry she would be! How she would scold. This was the riskiest thing Mrs Engelbrecht had done for years.

“I’ll make us a cup of tea,” she said.

She bundled the shirt up and took it through to the bathroom to soak. Seeing a red smear on her own hand, she thought then, distantly, of the risk: strange blood, infection. But what did that matter now, to an old woman?

When she brought the tea tray to the door, the man was sitting with his head down, slumped forward and sideways, as if he were slowly toppling over. She wondered how to approach, where to put the tray: the room was too small for all of them, Luki too. She felt suddenly exhausted.

“Luki,” she said. “Shoo.”

The dog ignored her. Nudged the ball forward with her muzzle. It rolled, touched the tip of the man’s white shoe. And this time, he lifted his head and observed the toy in front of him. It was a little larger than a tennis ball, a little smaller than a bowling ball. He moved his foot, tapped it back to the dog. Luki gave an excited yap and pounced, and the ball skidded to the side. The foot came out, fetched it back into position.

And, suddenly, the ball looked different. It looked alive – but tamed, brought to heel. In one motion the young man stood and pulled back his foot. The ball followed. He inserted his toe under the curve of yellow plastic, and with a flick brought it up into the air, where it seemed to hang at chest level, awaiting instruction. He kept it suspended with a few playful taps off his knees. Tip, tap; he leant back and the ball ran across his chest, nagging at his shoulders; he ducked, and the ball came across his back, popped out behind his head and sat for a moment on his shoulder; then chased down his front onto the tip of his boot again. His mouth was slightly open, his eyes on the ball.

As she watched, Mrs Engelbrecht felt a rush of simple pleasure: such a show! In her house! And again and again, the ball looping, spinning, up and down, off the side of his foot, the toe, off his knee, off his …

“Your head!” she cried as the ball smacked into the broken skin. He moaned, staggered back against the bed and sat down hard. The ball shot off at an angle, straight at the loaded tea tray.

For a frozen moment, Mrs Engelbrecht performed her own gravity-taunting dance of balance and skill, the tea cups riding the listing deck, tinkling madly; she rocked back, then forward, and then at last, astonishingly, managed to land the tray safely on the foot of the bed. Losing control, as she did so, of the laughter that burst out of her like a girl’s, spilling out over the trembling crockery. She laughed and laughed and could not stop, as the young man watched her with a dazed smile.

She persuaded him to lie down and covered him with a light blanket. He fell asleep almost immediately, sprawling diagonally on the old double bed with unselfconscious ease. She switched off the light and quietly closed the door.

Outside, on the balcony, she sat in her old wicker chair. Luki curled up in the chair opposite, which used to be Mr Engelbrecht’s. Both of them were panting a little from the excitements of the evening. She calmed, and looked out into the night, over the crowds on the street, the rising laughter and revelry. Her gaze touched the top of that brand-new football stadium, settling into the dip of its roof. The joy she’d felt, watching the young athlete waltzing with the ball, had not left her. The feeling was the colour of the yellow shirt now hanging up to dry above the bath – throbbing and unreal, persisting at the back of the eye. And now it was combined with a sense of power. Ownership, spiced with a secret. That big new stadium was a nest, and she the child who’d climbed the tree and stolen the egg. The prize is here, in my house, sleeping in my bed, she thought. The star. And nobody knows.