Nineveh

by Henrietta Rose-Innes

  Under that: A species of metallic longhorn?

  That’s all she can think of for now. Time to make a thorough survey of the interior conditions. Although already her sense of these things – her spidey sense – tells her that the walls and floors are as sterile as a swabbed-out surgery. But she sets about performing the necessary routines. She opens the windows and pulls back the curtains until the place is aflame with sunlight. Takes in the dimensions and geography of the interior.

  At first it seems as if the place is quite plain. But soon she realises that everything in this “servants’ quarters” is of the most luxurious quality, if minimal. The rooms are simple cubes, but there are alcoves and cupboards cunningly inset, shelves that whisper out from recesses at a touch. She investigates each one with professional eyes and fingers. Diligent as a secret policeman, she kneels, running her hands along the seams of skirting boards, opening cupboards, checking in every dim corner for lurking spiders or geckos. She strips down her bed and shakes out the bedding. Turns the mattress over – quite a task as it is a heavy, high-quality one – and examines the seams.

  All the time, she is loving the slate floors, the carpets in neutral shades, the subtle not-quite-white walls. Here it is: cleanness, simple lines, plush finishes. This is the comfort and ease that she was thirsting for, back in her crumbling, cracking old house. It’s as if she has imagined Nineveh, dreamed up out of her own cluttered mind these volumes of coolly defined space. All the place is missing for real luxury are the electronic items – TV, hi-fi – but she doesn’t even want to play music here; it would complicate the upholstered silence. She examines a beautifully constructed built-in closet – stands running her hands along the bevelled edge of the door – and then folds and stacks her clothes on its shelves. She never does that at home; she is an inveterate jeans-shedder, bra-scatterer. But here, for a few days at least, it seems possible to imagine that she might really be the inhabitant of these immaculate chambers. It occurs to her that if her own house, her home, were to evaporate, conflagrate, sink into a sudden marsh or sinkhole right now, she would feel only the smallest quiver of loss.

  In short, Katya has never seen a less parasite-infested place in her life. If there are any creepy-crawlies here, she’s brought them with her. There’s something odd about the sterility of the place. She looks out of the window again, and the frank morning sun makes it clear that there’s not so much as a field mouse, a cabbage butterfly, stirring on the property. It’s strange. After all, there is a big sticky swamp out there – hard to prevent contamination from happening. Such an unworkable combination of elements: mud and cream carpets, goose shit and pale stone. If Toby were here with her, she’d say something, make a joke of it. A smart remark remains unspoken on her tongue. She swallows it.

  But wait. She’s not completely alone: there is some human presence, as clear as a word spoken in the silence, although it takes her a second to locate it. There, on the kitchen counter, which is a lovely grey marble, delicately streaked with white veins like stratus clouds, is a single piece of thick, cream letter-paper, on which is written, in a looping, over-large hand: Welcome! She does not need to wonder whose it is. Those lush, rounded vowels, the curlicued W, the oversized exclamation mark: it can only be Zintle.

  As she picks it up, a musical note rings out. It is so exactly synchronised that it takes her a moment to disentwine the sensations, to realise that the paper itself is not chiming a melodious welcome. By the time she identifies the sound of the doorbell, someone’s rapping on the door – a harsh jiglike rhythm that makes her heart jump and the paper slip from her fingers.

  Through the peephole on the door, she makes out a stooped blue back.

  “Hello?”

  The figure turns and presents two large eyes, lemur-like in the peephole’s distorting lens.

  “It’s me. Reuben.”

  “Oh, right.”

  She locates a recessed intercom in the hallway and presses its unmarked buttons at random. The door unclenches its lock. Standing there is a small man with receding black hair. Reuben seems reduced in the daylight: his features still delicate and pleasing, but now showing the cast of his true age, which is closer to forty than twenty. He has hollow cheeks and pale-brown skin, and large, anxious eyes in an unusual shade: warm hazel, what one might even in certain lights call orange eyes. She sees this all particularly clearly because he stands in a shaft of light like some harassed administrative angel. He has two large plastic shopping bags from a budget supermarket weighing him down on either side.

  “Reuben, good morning!” she says, perhaps too cheerily. He looks startled. But she is, in truth, delighted to see him.

  “Electricity back on, everything okay?”

  “Everything’s great, thank you, I slept really well.”

  Too chatty, she thinks. He looks at her oddly. “Yes. So.” He gestures with his wrists – the bags’ weight is cutting into his hands, preventing a more expansive gesture.

  “Oh! Oh, sorry, can I take those?”

  He rubs his feet on the mat at the door and shuffles inside. His shopping bags seem exceedingly heavy. She tries to take them from him, he looks so frail under his burden, but he flashes her a look from under his well-shaped eyebrows and struggles on towards the kitchen.

  “Is this all for me?”

  In answer, he starts to unpack the bags, laying out their contents in neat rows, sorted by category of food. He unpacks: four cans of corned beef; a loaf of white bread, sliced; a tube of polony; a block of processed cheese; three bottles of bright red Sparletta; a tin of pilchards in peri-peri tomato sauce; a tin of condensed milk; a can of instant coffee; two rolls of toilet paper; a sack of sugar. She’s amused but not disturbed by the proletarian cast of the food before her. It is clear that Reuben has taken it on himself to buy the food for her – she cannot imagine the glamorous Zintle stocking up on bully beef. Perhaps this is what is considered suitable fuel for a pest-relocation expert, a Worm Lady. Looking at the glutinous polony, she wonders whether two rolls of toilet paper will be sufficient for the days ahead.

  Although the bags had been stuffed and heavy, now that the food is laid out it seems rather meagre. He looks at it sadly and shrugs. “Okay?” he asks.

  “It looks great,” she says. “Fabulous. Thank you so much for doing all this. What do I owe you?”

  He waves both hands before him. “No, it’s fine, paid for. So ja, if there’s anything else, just let me know. Any …” – he casts around, looking at the ceiling and then at the floor – “problems.”

  “Sure, thanks, I’m good though.”

  But it seems as if he is not quite ready to let the matter lie. He’s still looking fixedly at the floor. “Or any … you know. If anything troubles you. We’re down there, by the guardhouse, all the time. Me and Pascal?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Panic button.” He points at a small red knob next to the door. She’s seen them; they’re all over the place, in every room, insistent dabs of red in the otherwise colourless decor.

  “It goes through to the security node.”

  “Node?”

  “The guardhouse, you know. Press it, we’ll be up here like that.” He snaps his fingers. “And if we’re not there at that time, the signal gets routed to Central Control. Someone will come. Okay?”

  “Sure thing,” she says. “Oh, hey, Reuben? These insects … You’ve seen them?”

  He nods.

  “What do they look like? Do they really bite?”

  He pushes up his sleeve in answer. Under the uniform he has attractive skin, a smoothly muscled, youthful arm. An oddly intimate view.

  “See?” he says. “There. And there. Bites – this is from last week still. You see?”

  Could be. Tiny red pinpoints. But maybe not. Anyway, she nods. “I haven’t seen any insects at all.”

  “You will,” he says. “They come out after the rains. They bother the dog.”

  Dog? There’s a dog? Katya’s left butt
ock tenses in memory of a childhood mauling.

  Her expression must be plain, because Reuben’s looking at her thoughtfully. “The other man, who was here before about the goggas? He didn’t like the dog either.”

  6. SWAMP

  She slings her rucksack over her shoulder. It’s an old khaki thing, something left over from her dad – it looks like a piece of military kit. She supposes Len would have been in the SADF in his unimaginable youth, although it’s difficult to picture him marching on command. He never mentioned it. She never asked.

  Inside the bag: notebook, camera, binoculars, pencils, tape measure, water bottle, extra gloves, dark glasses. She has contemplated getting a more professional-looking bag; perhaps a hard case with proper clasps, like something to transport electronic equipment or refrigerated body parts. It would make a good impression on clients, give her an air of forensic expertise. With the money from this job, she might be able to afford some new gear.

  Stepping out of her front door onto the terrace, she looks down and sees that the traces of the mud ballet that she noticed last night have been mysteriously mopped away. The tiles beneath her feet are spotless. Did Reuben clean up? She checks her cellphone again: no reception, even up here on the terrace. Who would she phone, anyway? Toby. Hassle him about work.

  She takes the stairs down to Unit One. This is part of her assignment, too, surely? She presses her thumb to the sensor next to the door. Nothing. It seems there is a hierarchy of access here, and she has not been cleared for certain levels.

  No matter. She puts her sunglasses on and ventures out across the mud to explore the main apartment blocks. The buildings at first look bland and repetitive. But the compound is bigger than it appears and soon becomes confusing, with cul-de-sacs and blind corridors and connecting walkways, all done in the same silver-flecked white stone. The place seems in perfect repair, but nonetheless it feels disappointingly … frayed. Worn, but not by use; more like a brand-new item that has sat on a shelf too long, losing its crispness. It corresponds exactly to the neat architect’s model that she was shown in the office, but somehow in its sudden expansion to full scale, the place’s edges have been blunted. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed, though. She can see how the place would revive, if properly lived in.

  The concrete culverts that let the stream in and out of the property are deep, steep-sided and fitted with fine grilles to sift the water. Nothing much bigger than an undernourished tadpole’s going to come in or out that way. Where the water enters, the outside of the grille is choked with grass and plastic bags denied entry: no wonder the stream’s reduced to a grudging trickle.

  She presses her finger to the doors of one or two ground-floor flats, and these all open for her readily enough. Inside, everything is on a much grander scale than in Unit Two. Here is the visual language of the brochure: the huge high rooms, the luxurious finishes, all gleaming in expectation of first use. The layout of each is identical. The decor is luxurious but oddly erratic. She notices doorknobs and sections of carpet missing, as if the rooms are awaiting final touches. Certain things one might expect in a furnished flat – chairs, appliances, cupboard doors – are absent, while other details are in place.

  In several of the flats there is framed art on the walls: reproductions of old engravings of ancient monuments and ruins. She examines these with interest. Stepped towers, pyramids, statues. She recognises the lions from the gateposts as well as the daisy-like flower motif from the bathroom tiles.

  Alma would like it here, she thinks, and briefly imagines a life complete: Alma and her family in one of these apartments, Toby perhaps with a studio flat of his own, herself – well, she can only imagine herself in that caretaker’s flatlet, really. It’s just her size. She could wave to them all from her terrace, not too close and not too far away.

  Really she should search each block scrupulously, top to bottom, but she’s soon bored by their sameness. After looking through four identical ground-floor flats, a disconcerting series of rewinds and repeats, she decides to move on.

  Making her way between the buildings, she gets turned around and comes out, unexpectedly, near the guardhouse. She heads back towards Units One and Two, completing the circuit. The guard she noticed earlier under the milkwoods is still there, lounging with his jaw on his hand, a thin stream of smoke escaping from a cupped cigarette. He inclines his head slightly and she understands that she’s being beckoned. The man has powerful body language. She walks over, ducking under the low branches of the milkwood into the shade. He’s long-legged, dark-skinned and wearing sunglasses.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Good morning. I am Pascal,” he says, brushing a fingertip across his name tag. “Did you have a restful night?” His voice is French-accented and precise, the words carefully chosen.

  “Very. I’m Katya, by the way.”

  Another incline of the head. “Yes. I understand you are here to deliver us.”

  She smiles. “That’s the plan. Tell me, though – I thought this place was supposed to be infested? It seems so clean. Is there really a problem?”

  He nods. Drags on his cigarette.

  “You’ve seen them? The goggas?”

  “Yes. I have seen them. Last year, many, many, everywhere. Now this year. They have started to come again: one, two, six. There will be more.”

  “But what are they? What do they look like?”

  Pascal plugs the cigarette into his mouth and for a moment she doesn’t think he’s going to answer, but then he brings his hands up before his face and links the thumbs and wiggles his long fingers at her. It says: creepy-crawly. Something with many legs. “You will see them,” he says, “after it rains.” He rests his palms together. Then he pushes up his dark glasses and lets her see his close-set eyes. “You have been paid?”

  “I’m just here for a recce. I get paid when it’s done.” She pauses. “Why?”

  “No, I am just wondering.”

  She hesitates. “Can I ask, where are you from? Originally?”

  “DRC.”

  He offers nothing further, and she doesn’t press. Refugee stories always make her feel a little shy, awed even. She imagines in Pascal a rootlessness far more wrenching than her own, and also a sense of determined purpose that puts her to shame.

  “Are you going somewhere now?” he asks, rescuing her from her clumsy silence.

  “Maybe. How far are the shops?”

  “Reuben will go in,” he says. “Maybe today, later, maybe tomorrow only. You could ask him to fetch you something.”

  Behind him, set into the perimeter wall, is a pedestrian gate. She starts towards it, then freezes when she notices the giant dog lying spread-eagled on its back before it. A mastiff cross, or a Rottweiler, one of those meaty dogs with huge jaws. Maybe a boerboel. It’s black and tan, close-haired, solid as a young bullock, with a thick member and scrotum lolling between legs splayed to receive the sun. The animal raises its heavy muzzle to look at her, having no doubt picked up the molecules of anxious adrenaline she’s wafting into the air.

  “Is that thing friendly?”

  Pascal whistles a note through his teeth and the dog heaves to its feet and lumbers over, pressing its black flews against his hand. Pascal grips the dog’s collar. “His name is Soldier.”

  Give me baboons any day, thinks Katya.

  She edges past them to the gate. It’s made of wood reinforced with steel, narrow but high. Another thumb-pad next to it: it seems that whoever designed the system was just as worried about people getting out as getting in.

  “What’s through here? Can you get down to the beach?”

  “You can walk. It’s dirty, though. Full of mud, full of these things, these little things …”

  “Snakes? Goggas?”

  “No, no, different …” He pinches the skin of his neck, makes a sucking sound through his teeth.

  “Oh … mosquitoes? Ticks?”

  “Maybe ticks.”

  “Oh, okay. I’ll give it a try anyw
ay. Thanks.” She presses her thumb to the pad and hears the click as the gate releases itself. Pascal drops his shades over his eyes and dismisses her with a nod.

  As she passes through the gate, there’s a physical change in the atmosphere, as if she’s stepped into richer air. The spring-loaded door swings shut behind her, and she finds herself on a boardwalk. The boardwalk is L-shaped: it runs parallel to the wall, and then opposite the caretaker’s block it turns at right angles and strikes out into the wetlands – towards the beach, she assumes. The peeled pine is smooth and bright yellow; it dips and flows like a ribbon. Her feet curl inside her steel-capped boots. It would be nice to go barefoot, feel that texture with her soles. Another few months, she imagines, and the planks will have darkened with damp, rotting away into the vlei.

  She hesitates, trying to read the landscape. The beach is a public place, relatively safe, as is the walled compound behind her, but she’s not sure about the stretch of ground that lies in between. Instinctively, she scans for dodgy signals: no litter or other signs of human habitation, no stands of alien wattle. The place seems pristine. Surely she is alone? And anyway, how long would it take to traverse this uncertain zone – twenty minutes? She’ll be at the sea in no time. It’s a perfect day. And a boardwalk, especially a new, fragrant one such as this, is a lovely thing to travel along; the spring in your step is involuntary. A black bird darts past, almost touching her face with a wingtip: a benediction. Katya zips her uniform collar all the way up and steps out, with the authority of Nineveh at her back. She’s on a job here, after all.

  Ahead, the vegetation masses: stiff ruffs of dakriet higher than her head, grass and a profusion of small flowers, yellow and pink. The yellow road of the boardwalk turns sinuously to enter a maze of reed – and stops abruptly. They’ve built thus far and no further. The ground is about a metre down, but seems solid enough, and she jumps for it – calf-deep into brown mud.

  It makes her laugh, until she realises that she’s stuck. She can’t even reach the wood of the boardwalk – she’s leapt too far. For a second, she considers the extreme humiliation of dying this way. She can feel hands of clay around her ankles, pulling her down. With some rude sucking noises, she manages to work one foot to the surface, and then in a burst of panic lunges full-length, casting herself skydiver-style onto the raft of the surrounding reeds, nearly wrenching her boot right off. She claws herself onto drier ground, gasping then laughing again.