Nineveh

by Henrietta Rose-Innes

  The noise pauses and then returns louder, closer: it’s down on this level, at the front door. They hear the clack of the lock coming open. They wait in the dark.

  Mr Brand is angry. He bangs the front door as if a culprit might be hiding behind it. He’s stomping through the house now, swearing, exclaiming in disgust and horror at each new depredation. “Will you look at the floors! My god! How the hell could this happen!” There is an answering voice, too, a diffident echo to each of his barks of disgust.

  She’s unimpressed by his rage. In her father’s presence she has witnessed far worse. Len is no respecter of boundaries – not of things, or walls, or persons – and she’s seen his fist thrust through many flimsy obstacles. This man now blundering around the house is a lamb in comparison.

  Katya and her father meet each other’s eyes. His whole arm now glistens red with blood. But nonetheless, he cuts a figure of surprising authority, sitting there straight-backed and serious. She always imagined him a misplaced creature, but in fact he seems quite at home here: a man at his own table, under his own roof. In pain, but in possession. He has a strength she always underestimates.

  No wonder, then, that when Mr Brand does step out into the living room where they sit, followed by Pascal and Soldier, there is a disturbance that goes around the room: a confusion of authority. None of them really knows who the boss is here, who owes what allegiances. Soldier, certainly, is not going to risk a move. He skulks behind Pascal’s heels, showing them the whites of his eyes, chastened. Perhaps he’s never bitten a person before.

  Mr Brand is gasping in his rage. “You pair of bloody crooks!” he yells. “The two of you! Grubbs!”

  As he steps forward, the water-damaged floorboards give way beneath his weight, crumbling like soggy toast, and with a noise like paper tearing he plunges all the way through, up to his waist and then his armpits, his mouth gaping in indignant shock. Mr Brand has fallen through a hole in the world.

  They all look at him. Katya, Len, Pascal and Soldier. Katya lets out an involuntary cough of laughter. Len, too, gives a snort. Then he turns his attention to the guard.

  “Pascal. Howzit.”

  Pascal’s scanning the room, eyes shifting from person to person, assessing the situation, making decisions of his own. He raises an acknowledging eyebrow at Katya but his gaze settles on Len, and Katya sees at once – of course! – that between them lies a history, an understanding. Perhaps a business arrangement.

  “Old man. You need a doctor,” says Pascal.

  “Could be, could be,” says Len. He pushes back his chair and stands, unsteady. His leg, too, is slashed and soaked in blood. Katya puts out a hand to him but he ignores it, clutching rather the back of the chair as he straightens. “Eina,” he whispers.

  “You too, yes?” says Pascal to Katya.

  She hesitates. Behind her, Mr Brand, up to his armpits, moans in pain and fright.

  Pascal looks coldly at his boss. Then he whistles for Soldier, nods briskly at them all and leaves the room.

  “Give me a hand with him, Dad? He looks stuck.”

  But Len’s already following Pascal, limping after the dog.

  “Dad!”

  In the doorway, Len turns. “Not coming with us then, Katyapillar?”

  He gives a little smile and half a wave, a sketch of a salute with a bleeding arm. And then her father is gone.

  The silence leaves her feeling calmer. What she sees before her is a situation she recognises. A situation for which she is trained. It is a problem of too many categories of things colliding, of things in wrong places. It requires some sorting, some relocation. Humane, inhumane, whatever.

  She goes down on her knees next to the hole. He’s wedged in pretty tight, but between his body and the broken wood she catches a dark glint of water. There’s a brown stain starting to creep up the fabric of his linen suit, and up through the white shirt beneath it. His face is flushed and slick with sweat. His chest must be uncomfortably compressed. She wonders about splinters.

  “Are you okay?”

  He swallows, opens his mouth to breathe. “Help me here.” His voice is constricted.

  “Wait.” She takes an arm and tries to lever him up, but it’s useless even to try. It is as if Mr Brand is made of some denser material than flesh; he’s much too weighty for the flimsy foundations of Nineveh. Certainly he is denser than Katya, and she is powerless to stop his decline. The more they struggle, the deeper he sinks.

  “Are you standing?” she says. “Are you standing on solid ground?” He must be, surely. The foundations were not that deep to begin with. But her question introduces a new shade of horror into his expression. As if the world has just that second given way completely beneath his feet; as if he’s just understood that the void over which he hangs, the muddy vault, is bottomless.

  “Mr Brand,” she says, in the slow, firm voice that she uses to calm a frightened creature. “Can you pull yourself out?”

  No. No, he cannot.

  There’s the sound of a car starting up outside. Pascal and Len, leaving the sinking ship. And then comes the gush of the rain beginning again, and with it a lapping, sucking sound, as if a tide in the mud is tugging the heavy man down into the foundations. His eyes are clear and wide with fear, and he puts out his hands to her, but even before she grips them – slippery, their texture like cold plastic – they both know it’s hopeless. He’s wedged in, the mud is claiming him. She crouches on her haunches, holding his hands, and considers what is to be done.

  “Wait here,” she says, unnecessarily. “I’ll get help, okay? Just hang in there.”

  He grips her harder, nails digging into her wrists.

  “No,” he says. “No, no. No.”

  He goes on in this way for some time, his hands tightening around hers and the mud soaking into his clothes, moving upwards by capillary action. It has quite extraordinary wicking qualities, that quality fabric. The harder his cold hands grip hers, the faster the damp rises. Seized by a dread of that creeping stain, Katya pulls her hands away from his, and he gives a moan that seems grasped right out of his chest.

  She wrenches the rotten floorboards away from around him – they break easily – and flings them to one side, until Mr Brand is standing in a dark pool with the skirts of his jacket floating up around him.

  She sits on the floor, out of reach of his panicky clutch, and unlaces her boots. Pulls off her socks, exposing pale feet. Carefully, she lowers herself down beside him. It’s a bit of a squeeze, but there’s space. The water is numbingly cold. She feels it in her feet first, and then it reaches her knees, her waist, her chest – until she’s standing on fairly solid mud.

  She’s up close to Mr Brand now, almost embracing him. She can feel his heat coming through the soaked cloth, despite his shivers. It feels like they’re really touching each other for the first time: two animal bodies, seeking warmth.

  “Come,” she says, taking his hand. His stiff fingers twitch in her grasp. “We should go. Head down.”

  She puts her hand on top of his head and eases him lower; then she ducks her head too under the level of the floorboards and together they shuffle forward, stooped. She keeps one hand in his and the other on his back.

  A submerged lake. Dark at first, and then she makes out a narrow bar of fuzzy light, which must be coming in under the boardwalk. The water is murky and fouled and it’s impossible to see anything below its dark surface. It was foolish to come down here barefoot. Under the water her toes touch solid objects, both squishy and sharp, one of which slithers away. Leading Mr Brand by the hand, she wades forward carefully, with side-sweeping motions of her feet, as if she’s dribbling a small ball very slowly along the bottom.

  It is a strange journey through a low-ceilinged underworld, oblique light reflecting off the tilting surface of the water. It’s hard to know if they’re going in the right direction, but the water grows deeper and they’re gradually able to stand more upright. Around them a cold soup swirls. Afloat in it are
beams of wood and swatches of carpet, and cold slithering things that wrap around their legs. Flotsam and jetsam. The water slops up and down in wavelets but there is plenty of air, a good layer of breathing space. Underfoot, the mud sucks at her soles. She has little sensation in her feet now. If she stops moving for a second, the lower half of her body feels cut away, painlessly dissolved. At times in the dim light she can make out the bodies of beetles, clinging to the underside of the floor above their heads. Crawling ever onwards, into Nineveh.

  It takes them a long time to traverse the building. The ground slopes down beneath them until Katya is submerged almost to her chin, and then they pass under the boardwalk and ascend out of the murk until they’re standing on muddy ground with a light rain falling around them. Katya feels like she’s been holding her breath in the dark for a year.

  Strewn all around is a collection of random objects: towel rails and wooden beading and chair legs and sections of melamine countertops, haphazardly washed out onto the mud. And more fundamental objects: bricks, chunks of concrete.

  She sees: the place that once seemed so stable is not at all. It is rushing, swirling, all its bricks and tiles and phoney lions flushing out. Nothing can be contained. And as the substance of Nineveh unravels, the swamp winds it up like yarn into a ball. Knitting new patterns, weaving Nineveh into the shacks and the city beyond.

  Distracted, she lets go of Mr Brand’s hand.

  The girl from the side of the road is sitting under a tree in the rain, with a clear plastic bag arranged over her head and a pile of things on the ground in front of her. Shiny objects: pieces of pipe, bolts and washers. She’s busy with a rag, cleaning a bathroom tap. Startled, she looks up and stops her polishing. She twists the rag in her hands and waits.

  “Hold on,” Katya says to Mr Brand, and walks over, stiff-legged in her muddy greens.

  The girl takes the time to tuck the piece of metal into a Shoprite bag. “Where is the old man?” she says.

  “He’s not here. What’s your deal with him, anyway?”

  “Usually he brings me things from inside, and I pay him. With food, sometimes. Cigarettes.” She holds up the bag. “Do you want this back now?”

  “No, no it’s okay. Take it all, take what you can. The old man isn’t coming any more. And this,” – she gestures at the hole in the wall – “is going to be shut up. So take what you want.”

  The girl nods and stands, twisting the plastic bag. Her see-through shroud is beaded with moisture. She smiles unexpectedly, and is flushed with prettiness. “I’m going home,” she says. “You should go inside too. When the rain stops, oh!” And she widens her eyes and flutters her fingers in a familiar gesture, and shudders. “These goggas come again! It’s terrible!” And with a laugh, she’s off again into the veils of rain, her feet, Katya notices, sensibly encased in blue rubber gumboots like the ones worn in a butchery. Katya’s own feet are almost the same colour.

  She looks around for Mr Brand and spots him walking fast into the bush. She meant to bring him back in through the pedestrian gate, but he seems to be heading out on his own compass bearing, away from Nineveh. She trots to catch up.

  He strides forward through the flood waters like an automaton. His suit has grown dark with muck. His face is pale in the rain, jaw clenched, eyes wide, hair plastered to his scalp. Just as the floorboards of Nineveh proved too flimsy for Mr Brand, so too the faerie geography of the wetlands cannot deceive him. Unhesitating, thrusting forward with great purpose, he finds a straight path through the shifting waters. Katya scuttles after him, overalls dragging, plants whipping her face, following his buttocks – which, moulded by the wet cloth of his suit, are magnificently muscular and rounded. Her bare feet are still numb, and although she realises that they’re being pierced and torn, the pain feels distant, theoretical. She sees no birds now. Perhaps they’re frightened by the thrashing of Mr Brand’s determined march. In an amazingly short space of time, they’re on the beach.

  It is only when he’s walked far out onto the sand that Mr Brand stops and stands, glaring out at the sea, fists balled at his sides.

  The beach is beyond Nineveh’s witching zone. They have broken through. Katya looks around, and the regular topography reasserts itself: here is Noordhoek beach, and there the familiar hump of the mountain with the houses and the road at its base. They have re-entered normal time and space and gravity, deposited on the shores of an ordinary planet. Like spacemen, they are weak and stunned from their journey.

  Even the weather’s different here: the sky has cleared. A man comes jogging past, dog at his heels. Two young women, deep in conversation, give them an odd look. With their filthy, torn clothes, it must seem as if they’ve been blown here on some desperate storm.

  Mr Brand sinks to his knees on the white sand. He seems worn out. He pushes back the sleeve of his suit jacket, holds out one pale but substantial arm and stares at it. At first she thinks he’s looking at his watch, but he holds the pose too fixedly.

  She sees what it is: on the flesh of his forearm, a tick, dark brown and the size of a lentil, is crabbing across his flesh. It pauses, sizing up an especially succulent patch of skin.

  “Hold still,” she says, and puts out a hand to tweeze the tick off his flesh.

  “No,” he says, pushing her away with his other hand. “Leave it.”

  And the tiny parasite sinks its mandibles into his flesh.

  Strange to be back on a pavement, with taxis speeding past. Katya seems to have lost the knack of moving on tar. The surface is too rigid for her swamp soles. Her soiled uniform dries on her, a mud sheath like a chrysalis. Her fingernails and toenails, she notices, are grey with rinds of mud. At length, she finds herself once again walking across the giant’s hopscotch squares of the parking lot outside the mall. The car guards dubiously observe her approach.

  Through the glass doors, she sees the shimmering surfaces of the mall. But her reflection lies across this vision like mud on a shining floor. The image in the glass is not one she recognises. It is a wild thing she’s looking at, disgorged from some swampy depth, bedraggled and scratched and smeared. Her uniform is completely saturated with mud, her face pasted with weedlike strands of hair. She can smell herself, too: that ditchwater odour that she first sniffed, days ago, in the pit of the excavation opposite her home. She’s transformed, like something that’s lain under the earth through a long damp season, waiting to emerge.

  She feels in her pockets, looking for a set of keys, something to clutch for comfort, but she has none. She has no equipment. A couple of coins, that’s all she can find. They feel like archaic and not obviously useful artefacts.

  She did try to bring Mr Brand with her. She explained that she was walking down the beach to find telephones, taxis, help. But he hardly seemed to hear. She had no power over him, no more hope of moving him than she would a bull seal or a boulder. So she went alone, glancing back to where he sat gazing out to sea, grey suit against beige sand, growing smaller and smaller.

  He’ll be okay, she thinks. Men like him don’t get lost. In her mind she entrusts him to the joggers, the dog-walkers, the lifesavers, those attendants of the real. Because Katya needs to go home.

  She steps forward towards the glass, with little confidence that the sensors on the automatic doors will see her, will let her in.

  16. LEAVING NINEVEH

  The Constantia house looks much as it did before, if dishevelled. The swimming pool has gone a delicate shade of apple green, and the grass has grown tall enough to cover Katya’s feet.

  The same tree is afflicted – those insurance caterpillars have done their job, right on schedule – and once again Toby and she do their collection routine. The work goes quickly. This time the crop is meagre; one box of caterpillars, merely. Even the beasts seem to realise that the returns from Mr Brand are diminishing.

  The house is on auction, and Katya’s employers this time are the estate agents. As far as she can gather, Mr Brand had to leave the country in a hurry,
pursued by bankruptcy and lawsuits. He’s quite notorious now. It was in all the papers. Zintle, who now runs her own PR company, emailed her – with conspiratorial glee – a few of the news links. Nobody ever did get paid.

  There are no gardeners in sight: the property seems deserted. But as they’re heading back down to the van, catch in hand, Katya glances back up the slope of the lawn, and stops at the sight of a distinctive figure against the sky: sturdy, and dressed in buttercup yellow. Mrs Brand is standing facing away from them. Perhaps she’s come to fetch some last possessions, or dig up loot buried in a corner of the garden. She seems to be studying the grass at her feet. Is she contemplating her past mistakes, her future hopes? Or caught in the moment, wondering what’s going on under that green surface? Easy to think of a lawn as sterile and controlled, but the pest-relocation expert knows there is a world beneath. To the smallest creatures, Katya imagines, Mrs Brand is but a shadow in their skies, as vast and inconsequential as a cloud passing.

  On the way out, Katya doesn’t bother to toss any insurance into the bush. She can’t imagine that she’ll want to come back here. As Katya and Toby and the caterpillars head out onto the highway, she has the feeling that all of them have pulled off a great escape.

  “Where shall we take them, then?” he asks. “Back to the forest? That didn’t work so well before.”

  “No. I know a better place.”

  They walk in from the beach side. It’s a bright day. Winter with its storms has passed, and it looks like it’s shaping up to be a hot Cape summer, after all. The beach is full of people, swimming, jogging and walking their dogs.

  Toby’s taken his shirt off, revealing a few more hairs on his still unmuscled chest, and is running up and down to the surf, looping back all sand-crumbed and eager. Katya carries the small catch-box and keeps her eyes on the dunes, trying to spot some landmark. They’ve been walking for a good half-hour and she’s starting to wonder if they’ve overshot. The sand is monotonous; it’s hard to tell where anything is. Hard to imagine the shacks, or the acres of housing estates, just over the rise. The recession has not been good to anyone, and a lot of the luxury estates are failing, lying half-empty, waiting for people to start buying again. She imagines everything gone, Nineveh erased. She’d rather find a hole in the ground than a waste of empty buildings with not enough life or history in them even for ghosts. Then she sees the black hump of the shipwreck, half-submerged in the high tide, and orientates herself. And there – a gap in the bushes, a rudimentary path, and a flash of white. A piece of Nineveh. One step back, one step forward, and you’d miss it, but just here she can see the topmost corner of its battlements.