I saw my brother today. After two hundred and twenty two years I saw my brother’s skull in the basement of a German museum. Wedged between thousands of stolen African artefacts, I know the shape of my brother’s skull. Inside the cranium of my brother’s skull is a thin layer of gold.
In the dream I see a pink river slicing its way between two brown hills and above, in the midday skies, is a flaming red hot sun. On the dusty gravel road that comes down from the hills, a donkey cart drags my cold body over a stone bridge and into the village surrounded by women dressed all in black clothing; the coffin is covered with a blanket, no smiling faces.
Like a lot of Chatsworth’s service industry workers I ate many of my
meals at Imperial Curry House. The takeaway was popular with us
because it suited our odd working hours. It opened at noon each day of
the week and only closed at two in the morning.
Aba teetered between sleep and waking. Each time she drifted off, a bark or a croak or the rumble of a car rushing past roused her, so that again, she counted her breath – to not only slow it down, but also to distract herself from her thoughts, which whirled and collided like balls in a lottery machine.
In die begin was die appel ʼn aanbod.
Die Mattby metro is in ʼn mall,
Iso Omena, i.e. The Big Apple.
By Mattby trek die M1-metrokar weg
en ek voel vir my selfoon om te kyk hoe ver…
Their famous guest published an essay in which he described what happened that day. He called it Luncheon at Pretoria. It was jocular; wry. He built up the narrative with his customary care, beginning with a description of the drive from Jo’burg (thus we called it, he wrote) to Pretoria.
When the trucks are loud and heavy on the bridge above me, and there is too much sharp light from the metal bodies of so many cars flowing in front of me, I lean back into the shadows of the cool cement wall, close my eyes, and feel I am sitting by a river.
Mariam parked in her usual spot in front of the martial arts studio, a short way down from her father’s apartment block. There was secure visitors parking underground and away from the chaos of the main road, but she’d stopped using it some time ago.
Bad people live in the house across the train tracks. That’s what Ma says. She says it’s chock-a-block full of druggies and neglected children. Sometimes when we drive past Ma flicks her hand and says, Now there’s a bad lot. I don’t want you playing with those kids, do you hear?
It was only after he got back on the bus that would take him the long road home that he began to realise what he’d accomplished.
It had started that morning with an unexpected phone call from an ex-girlfriend whom he hadn’t seen or heard from in almost two decades.
