Homing

by Henrietta Rose-Innes

  Now that she’d found it, it was impossible not to see the trap against its background. It was in fact quite different to the shapes of nature around it. The only related objects were the straight line of the path and the small sign on its pole at the bottom of the hill. Human things.

  It was already very hot. Impatiently, she brushed off her cotton blouse and trousers; she was usually so careful with her clothes. The cellphone, finding reception, buzzed in her pocket. She let it ring, once, twice, three times. There was a long pause, and then the voicemail signal. She let it play. The message would be silence: a wordless plea from Thom, from the city. He always wanted to hear her, to know where she’d gone.

  This would not have happened in the early days of their relationship. She would never have left his call ringing. She would’ve dropped everything and gone to his side, wherever he was. She’d tried so hard. But Daniella had learnt, since then: she knew when to shut her ears and hold her voice. Because what difference would it make, to answer him now?

  In the afternoon, showered and changed, she went over to the farmhouse, where there was a lounge and kitchen. Other visitors were there, a couple that earlier in the day she had seen striding along the path in proper hiking boots. The woman was making sandwiches: white bread with cheese. They chatted about the heat, the walk.

  “We couldn’t see that leopard trap,” said the woman.

  “It’s hard to spot,” Daniela agreed, watching the woman bear down on the bread, making squares into triangles and smaller triangles again. “Just a big stone box. Nothing special.”

  The woman appraised her, knife poised. “You’re here alone? Because, if you wanted to join us for supper …? There’s plenty.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet.” Daniela smiled formally. “But I’m okay, really.”

  As she left the room, the woman’s smile dug into her back like a pebble. Daniela had spoken more coldly than she should have. But she knew how strangers observed her on these solitary trips: sometimes with pity, and sometimes with unseemly curiosity. Sniffing her for scandal. Often, men would try to pick her up.

  One day, she thought, I might say yes. It was the first time this had occurred to her. It seemed a remote idea, one to put away for the future; but not impossible. These weekends away were such ruptures, such odd holidays from the close embrace in which she lived with Thom. She wasn’t quite sure who she was, in these rented rooms, so far from the city and from home. She might do anything.

  Something brought her out of sleep, into a room grown incomprehensibly dark and with no one beside her. She was afraid to raise her hands from her body or to lift her head; a breath above her face, she sensed the grit, the coldness, the weight of stones packed tight …

  She sat for a moment on the edge of the bed, staring into the dark. Then she put on her thin shoes and a woollen jersey over her pyjamas and went outside.

  The path was a white stain in the moonlight. She walked along it to the ridge. It was a ruthlessly clear night, pure black and silver. At the side of the trap, she knelt. In between the heaped stones there were chinks of dark. But the blackness was full and breathing, and she knew that something was in there. Just like she always knew when Thom was home, before she’d put her key in the lock.

  She put her palm against the stone. It had lost every speck of sunlight it had gathered in the day, drawn down into the well of earth. She could feel the ground draining her body’s warmth too. She gripped a corner block.

  The stone moved unexpectedly, sliding out sideways with a hollow, grinding sound. A black breach, an exit. And a rush of relief, as if something had been held inside, like breath. She felt the wisp of a feline spirit wafting past her hands, through the broken gap in the stones and up into the roofless night.

  But after a suspended second the structure could not hold: the end of the trap collapsed with an icy clatter. The moon spilled light deep inside, where moonlight had not been for years – perhaps for centuries. Daniela bent to pick up a piece of fallen rock, about the size of a brick but much heavier. She thought for a moment of taking it home with her, a keepsake; but the idea of putting a piece of this small death-house inside her own gave her a feeling of inside-outness, and she let the slab drop to the ground.

  She walked a few paces further up the ridge and tried for cellphone reception. Then she listened to Thom’s staticky non-messages, one after the other, trying to discern the quality of his stillness.

  She drove back to town early the next morning. The long lines of the country folded up again around the car, enclosing a landscape that grew ever closer, denser, more intricately patterned. Daniela’s attention moved from the horizon and fastened itself on the dashboard, the multiplying lanes of the highway, the buildings forming up in ranks on either side. By the time she took the turn-off to home, the transformation was complete: the city rose thickly around her, stained, signed and tracked, cutting off any longer view. In one of its million niches lay Thom.

  She was weary by the time she got to the underground parking. In the mirrored elevator, she saw that her face was sunburnt, with clownish whiteness around the eyes where her sunglasses had sat. The lift was rapid and faintly perfumed: it was an exclusive apartment block.

  After she’d opened the door to the flat, she stood completely still for a moment, to listen. Her eyes sought out the damage. In the past, she had come back to find dislocated plumbing, doors pulled off hinges, pictures from frames. Thom directed his despair always against material things. It was not a chaotic violence, but rather a grimly driven dismantling. This time, the backrest of the sofa had been laid open, the stuffing protruding from a slit like something that had long desired release. Beneath the expensive upholstery were folded wads of yellow foam, cheap pine boards tacked together. In one place the skirting board had been levered away from the wall, revealing a black gap that went down who knew how far – perhaps beyond the concrete and pilings of the building and into the cold earth itself.

  She felt distant from the damage. It had always been Thom’s flat, really. Designed by him, paid for by him. Daniela thought rather, and for the first time, about the people who’d built these rooms, and who would repair them. She had seen blueprints, of course, but had never before been curious about the process of building, of raising the plans off the page. Someone must’ve laid bricks, one by one; someone must’ve covered them with these smooth coats, these tiles and plaster and paint.

  She wished that Thom had gone further this time, had ripped the skin right off.

  The air was rank. He would have stayed inside, not eating or bathing, with the windows closed. She moved around the flat, opening up, letting out the musty smell. Again she felt the passing of black spirits over her hands, as she had in the night at the leopard trap. With every bolt undone, there was release; some pressure was relieved.

  She cleaned a little, righting chairs and closing cupboard doors. Some of the damage – the cuts in the sofa, the dents in the wooden floor – would not be so easy to undo.

  She circled slowly, wiping, fixing, setting to rights. Her circle turned closer and closer around the bedroom, the bed, the man, until she could no longer avoid him and she knelt by his side at the edge of the mattress, hands resting on her thighs. She felt quite calm now, even tender. She could smell the spent arousal coming off his flesh.

  Thom was lying quietly, fully clothed, under the covers. She knew the exhaustion that overtook him, afterwards. He would not remember everything. He would wake soon and have to piece it together from the evidence.

  He opened red eyes.

  Thom, she said.

  He blinked at her.

  She put out a hand and pressed a strand of damp hair back behind his ear. Thom, she said again.

  Behind her she could hear the sounds of the day coming in through opened windows. She sensed, too, a door that might be opened, that she might pass through if she chose. He turned his head so that her hand lay over his lips. Opened his mouth slightly around her fingers.

  And eve
n at that moment, reaching out to touch his face, she could not tell exactly what she was: leopard or hunter. The one inside the box of stones, or the one who stands and watches as the trap falls closed, over and over again.

  Tremble

  Really, Erin couldn’t stand these things. It was only because of Alice that she was here at all – Alice with her schemes.

  “A singles weekend? Madness.”

  “Come and keep me company, at least,” Alice had said. “No pressure. And if you do meet someone, bonus. I mean, when last?”

  Truth was, an extremely long time.

  And so here they were, Friday afternoon, driving up to the gates of the wine farm for a Getting-to-Know-You Weekend. The place turned out to be luxurious: a Cape Dutch farmhouse with a steep backdrop of mountainside vineyards. Below were a sloping lawn, a pool and what the brochure called a “Dining Pavilion”.

  After they’d unpacked their bags, the two friends drifted down through the landscaped lawns towards the pavilion, where, according to the programme, cocktails would be served and they’d meet a likely crop of single men. As they walked, they were joined by two or three other women, also in their mid-thirties. They smiled a little tensely at each other, and Erin felt more than a touch of embarrassment at sharing their purpose.

  “God, I’m so not in the mood,” she muttered to Alice, who rolled her eyes and pointedly started chatting with the others.

  But, actually, Erin was pleased to be out of the city, and the gardens were really rather nice – meadowy, and patched with shade and sun. The late-afternoon warmth put a layer of down between her summer dress and skin, and she wished she could skip the Getting-to-Know-You part and stay outside. She dawdled, letting a gap open up on the path between herself and the group. Her eyes slid away from their smiles and their carefully chosen, cautiously sexy clothes. Only a few hours into the weekend, and already she could feel herself pulling back into her thoughts, into familiar silence. And she hadn’t even met the men yet.

  It was the weather, too; the air pressed gently against her face, making it hard to release words. She walked with one hand held up against the sun, allowing her eyes to float from the pleasant contours of the lawn to the duller green corduroy of the vineyards. Ah well, at least there’d be cocktails.

  The gardens tempted her. They reminded her of the sloping lawns at Kirstenbosch, irresistible to her when she was a little girl. She’d make her parents wait while she rolled down the hill like a log, over and over, until the skin of her arms and legs was red and her head spun. But later, trying the same thing when she was older, a student playing at kids’ games, she’d felt merely queasy. Same with the playground swings – that stomach-flip moment at the top of the swing, exhilarating up until the age when it suddenly became nauseating; which was about the same age you found you were too big to squeeze into the car-tyre seats. Free flight and dizziness and sick-making thrill … when did one stop wanting that feeling?

  Down the slope, beyond a stand of bamboo, a topaz glint caught her eye. A teenage boy stood at the edge of a swimming pool, staring into the water. As the women passed by on the path above him, he glanced up. Too far away for much detail, Erin saw only that his hair was white-blond, cut so close to his head he looked shorn, and that he wore jeans. A white towel was draped over his bare shoulders.

  She slowed, nameless recognition flaring with the scent of cut grass. Then the bamboo came between her and the vision of the boy.

  It was hot, and she suddenly felt the wire of her bra stiff against her body, the elastic of her panties – reminding her that she was older, with womanly flesh that sat on her back and belly and hips. Her lips were sticky with too much lipstick. She walked on.

  It was a long time ago now, more than twenty-five years. The swimming pool. The boy.

  The air was hot with sound: cheers and screams, churned water, the starter’s gun. Bored and sweating in her school uniform, she’d edged away from the roar and gone to stand in the shade under the shaking stand. A bubble of furtive silence. Here were other skulkers – boys chatting up girls from different schools, someone with a cigarette in the darkest corner. The gun cracked for a new race and above her the shouts began again. Unnerved – one of the planks seemed about to give way – she stepped back into the sun to watch the race, hand shading her eyes, squinting into the spray and light.

  Suddenly she was tackled, almost knocked off her feet. A bewildering body-check of limbs and skin and breath; it was several heartbeats before she untangled things enough to find that she’d been drawn into a one-armed embrace by a tall boy – older, from another school, almost naked in a black Speedo – and was now being rocked back and forth as he gripped her and yelled encouragement to the swimmers. Dark blond, deep tan. His right arm was slung around her neck and his hand, astonishingly big and male, lay casually across the top of her chest, thumbnail pressing into her skin. Coarse damp hairs from his armpit pushed against her cheek and ear. Everyone was shouting, the pool thrashed into a glittering tumult: Give us an A give us an R … She pressed closer and breathed him in. Slipping her arm shyly around his waist, she felt his skin along the whole length of her body: smooth across his back, goosebumped on his arms and thighs, still cool from swimming. The gooseflesh left his skin and swarmed over hers. A jolt passed through her stomach, her chest and throat, all the way up the back of her neck and into her scalp.

  It was over soon. As the race ended, he mashed her nose into his chest in a full-body hug, then pulled away and left her burning.

  Afterwards, she couldn’t find him in the crowd or in the press for the school buses. But for weeks afterwards, she could close her eyes and smell his sweat, feel the prickle of his hair. Spiky, with that snaky tail at the nape – not a style that would be tolerated at her own rather prim school. It was enough to shake her, sitting in class; to make the whole left side of her body tingle with confusing heat and coolness.

  The men were, of course, disappointing. There were only seven of them to the ten women, and the one obvious catch, a tall photographer with cheekbones, was already looking bored and restless. There was a red-faced man with a Father Christmas beard, who’d had too many cocktails by the time they arrived; a worn ex-surfer who kept making nervous, risqué puns; a pointy-featured stockbroker who seemed angry to be there at all. The others were unobjectionable but bland. One, a doctor, had features so unmemorable that every time Erin tried to focus on them his face seemed to blur and swim. There was a swarthy guy whose blunt, forceful build was not, in theory, unattractive, but when she approached him she met a blank in his eyes, as if she were a boulder blocking some more interesting view. After the two of them had stood for a minute or two staring sightless over each other’s shoulders, she drifted on with an acid smile.

  Erin noted with fatigue that a certain amount of pre-selection had occurred for this event: everyone was white, middle class, of an age. That was, she supposed, what people requested. She’d known these people all her life.

  Alice gave her an encouraging wink – clearly, man number seven was one she thought Erin would like. So he had the disadvantage, like all set-ups, of demonstrating much too clearly the kind of man one’s friends think one deserves. Nobody, that is, they might actually want for themselves. This one was a round, reddish guy with no straight edges in his tight-packed body. As they stood at the braai, she watched his plump Elvis lips and felt herself sinking into wordlessness. Her mouth glued shut and she had to take sips of beer just to keep it from sealing over completely. It wasn’t shyness, as it had been when she was a girl – just a terrible sense of predictability that made all words seem already spoken.

  Erin sighed. These men were probably pleasant enough, but who could tell? She was so often wrong about people.

  She closed her eyes and tried to remember with her body: the fizzing anticipation, the ache at the back of the throat, the need to touch.

  My god, she thought, I used to tremble with desire.

  Laughing quietly at herself, she looked do
wn at the glass of beer growing warm in her hand. If she drank enough she’d be able to pretend, to read her body’s blurred and softened boundaries as something like lust. But right now, here with these people, she didn’t want to allow that. So she backed away from the scene, moving to the edge of the deck. The air was cool there, beyond the glow from the fire.

  “Are you that bored?” Alice joined her, and together they stared out at the darkening lawns. Erin could hear frogs, nightbirds; she’d forgotten that they were in the countryside.

  “Not your type, then? That Michael,” Alice ventured, lighting up a cigarette.

  “Is that his name? The round guy? No … you know. I’m sure he’s perfectly nice.”

  Alice laughed. It was an old catchphrase between them.

  “I don’t know, Al,” Erin sighed, putting the empty beer glass down at her feet. “I mean, when last did you really, really find yourself attracted to someone? Overpoweringly, on first sight? So that you’d do anything, go anywhere, without another thought?”

  Alice released smoke thoughtfully. “Oh, about twenty minutes ago, I suppose,” she said. “But it didn’t last. You?”

  Erin smiled into the dark. “There was this boy … when I was thirteen.”

  “First love? Really? You never told me. How long did that go on?”

  Erin laughed. “Two laps, I think it was. At a gala.” She held out her hands before her, pale and steady against the dark. “Can you believe it, Al? I used to tremble.”

  Erin was the first to leave the party. She walked barefoot across the cool, clipped grass, sandals in hand, away from the glow and the tipsy voices. A fork in the path led her, perhaps by accident, down towards the swimming pool.