A saddening scenario presented itself: every book will change your life.
Bundling Himself up in His diet, He turned left, took eight sinuous steps, choreographing heel, toe, knee and hip by turns, all His own work, and turned left again into the polyunsaturated interior of Tropical Fast Foods. He was a natural. He passed under the neon sign: a green coconut palm inclined against an orange sunset while the sun sank like an embolus into a sea of lymph. Las Vegas Motel – Color TV – 5 mi. from Damascus – Next exit.
Adventure beckoned.
I had consumed no more than 25 per cent of my meal – let’s say R3.00’s worth – and hadn’t so much as sipped the coffee, but I rose as one man, dragged on my trench coat and hurried inside to pay the bill.
My white plastic knife remained jutting from the steaming potato like a disposable Excalibur.
“Danke schön,” I said, in order to ingratiate myself with the Potato Woman of Düsseldorf.
“Fünfzig, fünfzehn,” she replied, dishing change into my palm, and banged the drawer of the cash register with her chest.
Los!
On my way into the night I skirted five children squabbling over my leftovers: three-quarters of a potato (75 per cent), divisible by five only with basic arithmetic.
I sauntered across Pretoria Street, dodged a midnight-blue BMW with one headlight, cursed silently. In the few short minutes that had passed since the sighting, a grain of doubt had jammed in the treads of my logic, and now I paused on the threshold of Tropical Fast Foods, in the shadow of the electric tree, suddenly off balance. Where am I? Or rather: Where was I? Hollywood Boulevard? Dar es Salaam? Dakar? The Botanical Gardens in Durban?
Oh.
The man I had taken for the King was leaning against the counter with His back to me, gulping the fat air down. Blue denim jacket with tattered cuffs; digital watch, water-resistant to 100 metres (333 feet); tracksuit pants, black with a white stripe; blue tackies (sneakers), scuffed; white socks stuck with blackjacks.
The Griller assembled a yiro (R9.50). He pinched shavings of mutton from an aluminium scoop with a pair of tongs and heaped them on a halo of unleavened pita-bread. He piled sliced onions and sprinkled the unique combination of tropical seasonings. I turned aside to the poker machine and dropped a rand in the slot.
The machine dealt me a losing hand.
Meanwhile, the spitted mutton turned at 2 r.p.m., like a stack of rare seven-singles in a jukebox. A skewered onion wept on top of the pile. Where the Griller’s blade had pared, the meat’s pink juices ran, spat against the cauterizing elements, which glowed like red neon, and congealed upon the turntable.
I drew the Jack of Diamonds and the King of Hearts.
The man I had taken for the King turned to the Manager and spoke inaudibly from the right side of His mouth. There was no mistaking the aerodynamic profile, the airbrushed quiff as sleek as a fender, black with a blue highlight, the wraparound shades like a chrome-plated bumper, the Velcro sideburns, the tender lips.
The Manager amplified the whispered request for more salt.
The Griller obliged.
I kept the Jack and the King, against my better judgement.
The Manager cupped a paper bag under a stainless-steel funnel and tipped a basketful of chips (fries) down it. He dashed salt and pepper, shook the bag, and handed it to the King. The King throttled the bag and squirted tomato sauce (ketchup) down its throat like advertising.
The Griller finished assembling a yiro (R9.50). He rolled it expertly in greaseproof paper and serviette (napkin), slipped it into a packet and handed it to the Manager, who passed it to the King. The King took the yiro in His left hand. With His right hand He produced a large green note (bill), which the Manager held up to the light before clamping it in the register.
A flash of snow-white under the frayed cuff when the King reached for His change. Not a card up His sleeve but a clue: sunburst catsuit, doubling as thermal underwear.
The King dropped the coins into a money belt concealed under His belly. He took up the (fries). He swivelled sinuously and tenderly. Anatomical detail: sinews and tendons rotated the ball of the femur in the lubricious socket of the hip. (Nope.) Of the pelvic girdle? (Yep.) He slid onto an orange plastic stool. His buttocks, sheathed in white silk within and black polyester without, chubbed over the edge.
He pushed the shades up onto His forehead. He took out a pair of reading-glasses with teardrop rims of silver wire, breathed on the lenses (uhuh), buffed them on His thigh and put them on.
Now I might have hurried over, saying: “Excuse me. I couldn’t help noticing.”
Instead, I looked away.
In the screen of the poker machine His reflection unrolled not one magazine but four: the February issue of Musclemag International (The Body-Building Bible), the April issue of Stern, the Special Collector’s issue of Der Kartoffelbauer (March) and the November 1991 issue of Guns & Ammo. He spread them on the counter, chose the Stern, rolled the other three into a baton and stuffed them into a pocket.
He opened the magazine to the feature on Steffi Graf and flattened it with His left forearm. With His right hand He peeled back the greaseproof paper and with His left He raised the yiro. His Kingly lips mumbled the meat as if it were a microphone.
The menu said it was lamb, but it was mutton.
A full-page photograph showed Steffi Graf serving an ace. It captured her racket smashing the page number (22) off the top left-hand corner of the page and the sole of her tennis shoe squashing the date (April) into the clay. It captured the hem of her skirt floating around her hips like a hula hoop. The King gazed at her thighs, especially the deep-etched edge of the biceps femoris, but also at her wrists, with their eight euphonious bones – scaphoid, semilunar, cuneiform, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, unciform, os magnum – enclasped by fragrant sweatbands, and her moisturized elbows scented with wintergreen.
Er.
Then He gazed at the talkative walls. The muscle in His mandible throbbed, the tip of His tongue simonized the curve of His lips with mutton fat. He spoke with a full mouth, He pronounced the lost opportunities under His breath: Hamburger R4.95 – Debrecziner R6.50 – Frankfurter & Chips R6.95 –
He chewed. He swallowed.
Eating made Him sweat. He was fat, He needed to lose some weight. He’d lost (six and a half pounds) in the fifteen years since His last public appearance, but still He was fat. An eight o’clock shadow fell over His jaw, He needed to shave. He needed to floss, there was a caraway seed lodged against the gum between canine and incisor, maxilla, right, there was mutton between molars. He needed to shampoo, His hair bore the tooth-marks of the comb like the grooves of a 78.
He ate, it made Him sweat. A bead of sweat fell like a silver sequin from the end of His nose and vanished into a wet polka dot on His double-jointed knee. He swabbed His brow with the (napkin). He licked His fingers and wiped them on His pants. He got up and walked out.
Wearing His shades on His forehead and His reading-glasses on His nose, He glided over the greasy (sidewalk).
I hurried after Him, pausing momentarily to pluck: the Stern, which He had left open on the counter, the corners of the pages impregnated with His seasoned saliva; the (napkin) bearing the impress of His brow; and the sequin. (I have these relics still.)
He took eight sinuous steps and turned left into the Plus Pharmacy Centre and Medicine Depot. He padded down the aisle, between the Supradyn-N and the Lucozade (on the one hand) and the Joymag Acusoles: Every Step in Comfort (on the other), to the counter marked Prescriptions/Voorskrifte.
The Pharmacist was a bottle-blonde. She was neither curvaceous nor bubbly, wore a white coat, bore less than a passing resemblance to Jayne Mansfield. The King spoke to her out of the left side of His mouth. He proffered an American Express traveller’s cheque and a passport.
Two other customers were browsing: a man in
a blue gown, a woman in a tuxedo. She shooed them out and closed the door in my face. There was a poster sellotaped to the glass: Find out about drug abuse inside. Under cover of studying the small print I was able to gaze into the interior.
The King pulled a royal-blue pillowslip embroidered with golden musical notation and silver lightning bolts out of the front of His pants. He swept from the laden shelves into His bag nineteen bottles of Borstol linctus, sixteen bottles of Milk of Magnesia, twenty-two plastic tubs brimming with multi-vitamin capsules (100s), fifty-seven tubes of grape-flavoured Lip-Ice, three bottles of Oil of Olay, four aerosol cans of hair lacquer, twelve Slimslabs, three boxes of Doctor McKenzie’s Veinoids, five bottles of Eno, twenty-five tubes of Deep Heat, a king-size bottle of Bioplus, five hot-water bottles with teddy bear covers, an alarm clock, six tubs of Radium leather and suede dye with handy applicators, a jar of beestings and a box of Grandpa Headache Powders.
The Pharmacist tagged along, jabbing a calculator.
He signed the cheque.
I rootled in a bombproof (trash can).
He took eleven sinuous steps.
The Pharmacist held the door open for Him, and shut it behind Him when He had passed, breathing in His garlicky slipstream.
He found Himself once more upon the (sidewalk) among the hurly-burly of ordinary folk.
I might have made an approach with right hand extended: “Long time no see.”
Instead, I hid my face.
He breathed. He took off the reading-glasses, He pulled down the shades. He settled His bag of tricks on His left shoulder. He turned right.
The King moved on foot through the Grey Area.
Now He took five hundred and seventy-one sinuous steps and turned right again. Attaboy.
Window-shopping:
He passed Checkers. He passed the hawkers of Hubbard squashes. He passed Fontana: Hot roast chickens. He passed the Hare Krishnas dishing out vegetable curry to the non-racial poor on paper plates. He passed the International Poker Club: Members Only, and the Ambassador Liquor Store: Free Ice. He passed the Lichee Inn: Chinese Take-aways. He gave a poor girl a dime. He passed the hawkers of deodorant and sticking-plaster. He passed the Hillcity Pharmacy, Wimpy: The Home of the Hamburger, and Summit Fruiters. He shifted the bag of tricks to His right shoulder. He passed Hillbrow Pharmacy Extension (a.k.a. Farmácia/Pharmacie). He passed the hawkers of wooden springboks and soapstone elephants. He dropped His Diner’s Club card in a hobo’s hat. He passed the Cafe Three Sisters, Norma Jean, Look and Listen, Terry’s Deli, The Golden Egg, Le Poulet Chicken Grill, Gringo’s Fast Food, Bella Napoli and Continental Confectioners: Baking by Marco. He passed the hawkers of block-mounted reproductions of James Dean with his eyes smouldering and Marilyn Monroe with her skirt flying. Late, both of them. He passed the Shoe Hospital: Save Our Soles. He passed the hawkers of block-mounted reproductions of Himself with the white fringes of His red cowboy shirt swishing, and the black fringes of His blue hairstyle dangling, and the grey shadows of the fringes of His black eyelashes fluttering. Himself as a Young Man. His name was printed on His shirt, over the alveoli of His left lung.
He felt sad to be a reproductive system.
Sniffing, He turned right into the Wurstbude.
“Guten Abend,” He said. “Wie geht’s?”
“So lala,” said the Sausage Man of Stuttgart.
The King extracted a pickled cucumber as fat and green as His opposable thumb from the jar on the counter. “Ich möchte eine Currywurst,” He said, sucking on the cuke, “mit Senf, bitte.”
(R4.70.)
He held His breath as the wurst went down the stainless-steel chute. One flick of the lever and the blades fell: the wurst spilled out in cross-sections two-fifths of an inch thick.
“Fünfundzwanzig…dreissig, sieben, zehn,” the Sausage Man said.
“Ich bin ein Johannesburger,” the King replied. “Auf Wiedersehen.”
At the barrel-table outside He ate the lopped sausage expertly with a brace of toothpicks, in the time-honoured manner. He broke the bread and mopped the sauce. He dusted away the crumbs.
Momentarily satiated, shaded, the King moved once more through the Grey Area; once more He moved sinuously; once more He appreciated the cosmopolitan atmosphere. (We both did.)
Now He took two hundred and seventy-five steps (Squash and Fitness Health World, Tommy’s 24-Hour Superette, Bunny Chow, Bengal Tiger Coffee Bar and Restaurant, hawkers of baobab-sap and the mortal remains of baboons, Econ-o-Wash, Magnum Supermarket, Jungle Inn Restaurant, Quality Butchery: Hindquarters packed and labelled) and turned right.
He stopped. He parked the bag of tricks. He hitched down the tracksuit pants with His left hand and unzipped the catsuit with His right. He reached into the vent and abstracted a dick.
I was too far away, propped against a fireplug like a gumshoe, to determine whether this organ had charisma. But I was close enough to hear a musical fountain of urine against a prefabricated bollard and to see afterwards on the flagstones a puddle shaped like a blackbird.
He moved. He took one hundred and one steps (Faces Health and Beauty: Body Massage, American Kitchen-City, Hair Extensions International) and turned left into the dim interior of Willy’s Bar.
The fascia of Willy’s Bar was patched with the gobbledegook of the previous tenant’s plastic signage: Julius Caesar’s Restaurant and Cocktail Bar, upside down and backwards.
Willy’s Bar was licensed to sell wine, malt and spirits, right of admission reserved.
The King and I felt like blacks, because of the way He walked. Everyone else felt like whites. Nevertheless, apartheid was dead.
I ordered a Black Label and went to the john.
The King sat at the counter. He put on His spectacles and fossicked about in the bag of tricks. He swallowed a handful of pills. He swallowed a Bioplus on the rocks and chased it with a Jim Beam.
He had a fuzzy moustache of curry-powder on His upper lip. It affected me. I hid my face behind the Star (City Late) so that I wouldn’t feel spare.
We watched the Weather Report together. The cold front was on our doorstep, they said. The King was dissatisfied. I thought He might draw a handgun, but He did not. He just took a powder and pulled a mouth.
I read the Smalls.
Spare is another word for lonesome.
We watched Agenda: The ANC’s economic policy.
Ah.
While a party spokesman was explaining the difference between property and theft, the strains of “Abide with Me” drifted in through the batwing doors.
A faraway look stole over the King’s features. He gulped His drink, slapped a greenback on the counter and went out.
I followed after, lugging the depleted bag of tricks and the change (R3.50).
O Thou who changest not, abide with me, the Golden City Gospel Singers beseeched Him. In a moment He had insinuated Himself into their circle, between the blonde with the tambourine and the brunette with the pamphlets.
A chilly wind blew over the ridge from the Civic Theater. It picked up a tang of Dettol from the City Shelter and Purity from the Florence Nightingale Nursing Home. It swept sour curls of sweat and burnt porridge out of the Fort and wrapped them in dry leaves from the gutters. Tissue-paper and handbills tumbled over the flagstones. The wind coughed into the microphone.
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
The King opened His mouth. Then He gaped, as if He’d forgotten the words, and shut it again. He would not reveal Himself.
I wept. I wept in His stead. For what right had I to weep on my own behalf? To weep for the insufferable bitterness of being dead for ever and the ineffable sweetness of being born again?
The hymn came to a sticky end. A siren bawled on Hospital Hill. The brunette pressed a pamphlet into my hand: Boozers are Loozers.
I seized His arm and felt
a surprisingly firm brachioradialis through the cloth. He shrugged me off – a sequin shot from His cuff and ricocheted into the darkness – but the damage had been done: no sooner had I touched Him, than He began to vanish.
I was moved to call out, “The King! The King!” The brunette embraced me and cried, “Amen!” Two hours later I still had the imprint of her hairclip on my temple.
While I was being mobbed, someone walked off with the bag of tricks.
Laughter: involuntary contractions of the facial muscles, saline secretions of the lachrymal ducts, contortions of the labia.
Vanishing-point: a crooked smile, a folderol of philtrum, nothing.
I hunted high and low for the King, in karaoke bars, escort agencies, drugstores, ice-cream parlors and soda fountains, but found no trace of Him.
I have a feeling in my bones – patellae, to be precise – that He is still out there.
Appendix
* * *
—
The very next morning I saw Steve Biko coming out of the Juicy Lucy at the Norwood Hypermarket. I followed him to the hardware department, where he gave me the slip.
The WHITES ONLY Bench
Yesterday our visitors’ book, which Portia has covered in zebra-skin wrapping-paper and shiny plastic, recorded the name of another important person: Coretta King. When Mrs King had finished her tour, with Strickland herself playing the guide, she was treated to tea and cakes in the cafeteria. The photographers, who had been trailing around after her trying to sniff out interesting angles and ironic juxtapositions against the exhibits, tucked in as well, I’m told, and made pigs of themselves.
After the snacks Mrs King popped into the gift shop for a few mementoes, and bought generously – soapstone hippopotami with sly expressions, coffee-table catalogues, little wire bicycles and riot-control vehicles, garish place-mats and beaded fly-whisks, among other things. Her aide had to chip in to make up the cost of a set of mugs in the popular “Leaders Past and Present” range.
Flashback Hotel Page 15
