Zoo City

by Lauren Beukes

  "Oh good," she says, slipping into her shoes and standing to greet me. I catch a glimpse of the cover of the magazine. Mental Health & Substance Abuse Dual Diagnosis. A glance at the bookshelf built into the hollow base of the window seat reveals similar numbingly academic titles. There is a heavy wooden desk stacked with a scramble of papers and files encroaching on a slim silver laptop at the centre of it all, like the eye of the hurricane. Above the desk is a painting of a Zulu hut on fire, a deep phallic root extending into the ground and figures writhing around inside in torment.

  "Heavy reading," I say as she shakes my hand. She has a grip like a pro golfer, loose, but in total control.

  "Homework," she replies with an easy grin that furrows lines around her eyes. She's short, barely five foot in her heels and black trouser suit, but there is a sharp curiosity in her eyes that goes with her chin – the kind that jabs into other people's business. She has a calico pixie cut, russet streaked with grey. I get the impression she's the art buyer. It's the shoes. Teal-blue Mary Janes with playful detailing – purple and red flowers perched on the straps. "I'm Veronique, obviously. Thank you so much for coming out."

  As if I was the one doing her the favour.

  "Thanks for accommodating me at such short notice."

  "It's a catchy headline. Rehab safaris. Makes it sound so glamorous."

  "It's all about the hook."

  "Mandla Langa," she says noticing my interest in the

  burning hut. "His early stuff was all circumcision-related. It's about culture and tradition, rites of passage, the difficulties of being a man. And also being mutilated."

  "Do your clients relate?"

  "We call them patients. But, yes, I suppose some of them do. C'mon, I'll give you the tour." She's all brisk enthusiasm.

  "I'd say about fifteen to twenty per cent of our patients are foreign," Veronique says. Like a good journalist, I dutifully take notes. "A lot of them are from the UK. It's a last resort for the families – that old attitude of 'send the troublemakers to the colonies!' But we also get people coming in from Nigeria, Angola, Zimbabwe. Naisenya, the young woman you were talking to outside, is Kenyan for example. Mostly, it's a matter of money. Three months with us costs the same as a week in a UK treatment centre like the Abbey."

  She opens the door onto a spacious lounge with chairs arranged in a loose arc, facing a huge open fireplace – big enough to cook children in. Above the mantelpiece is a mounted Perspex light, featuring a naïve drawing of a cocky gentleman devil smoking a pipe, reclining in an armchair. On the opposite wall is a dreamy etching of a goat with its head bowed and a chain around its neck.

  "Between the devil and the deep blue scapegoat?" I say.

  "It's just art, Ms December," she says, not meaning a word of it. "The most important part of what we do here is penetrating people's denial systems, removing the alibis that will trip them up."

  "Sending their sins out into the wilderness to die."

  "It's one of the theories of being animalled, of course," she says.

  "I never liked that one. Give me the Toxic Reincarnation theory any day."

  "I don't think I'm familiar with that."

  "It's very now. Global warming, pollution, toxins, BPA from plastics leaching into the environment has disrupted the spiritual realm or whatever you want to call it, so, if you're Hindu, and you go through some terrible trauma, part of your spirit breaks away and returns as the animal you were going to be reincarnated as."

  "What do you think about it?" I'm aware of her standing very still, all the better to psychoanalyse me.

  "Does the therapy session come free with the tour?"

  "Sorry, it's habituated. I'll stop." She holds up her hands in mock defeat.

  "We were talking about art, I believe? The light is Conrad Botes and Brett Murray. The scapegoat is Louisa Betteridge."

  "It's an upgrade from the rehab facility I went to. The only art we had was graffiti drawn on the toilet walls."

  "Was that in prison? I've always wanted to do a prison programme. We run an outreach project in Hillbrow, you know. We do good work. A lot of aposymbiots. You should visit."

  "Maybe I will," I smile thinly to make it clear that this will happen when hell turns into a family-friendly summer resort. "Same deal?"

  "Same tactics, different strategy. This isn't a broken leg, it's a long-term recovery. You don't want to do a story on that, do you? Make some noise? We've got some sponsors involved in our Hillbrow project, but it's difficult."

  "Not really in my brief, sorry. I can pitch it for next time, maybe."

  "I understand. Come, I'll show you the dorms."

  We pass through the courtyard where a bunch of crazily beautiful boys and girls are lolling, smoking and chatting. There is a high ratio of killer cheekbones per capita.

  "You obviously get a lot of models," I say, walking up a flight of stairs to the dorm floor. Two beds to a room. They're bright and cheery and rich in personal detail.

  "Also musicians. DJs. Journalists. Advertising people. There are certain lifestyles where high-risk behaviour is endemic to the culture."

  "Any names I'd recognise?"

  "We take our privacy policy very seriously, Ms December. I hope you're not fishing for some celebrity scandal. I didn't take you for a tabloid journalist." Unfortunately, that's one step up from what I actually am.

  I decide not to ask her about Song or S'bu directly. Instead I show her the contents of my folded-up tissue – the dried herbs I found in Song's bathroom.

  "Actually, do you mind if I ask you what this is?"

  She takes a pinch between her fingers and sniffs it. "I'm not the herb expert, but I'd guess African wormwood? It's very commonly used for cleansing, both by naturopaths and in traditional purification rituals. Some of our patients are into more alternative treatments."

  "But you're not?"

  "I like good old-fashioned medicine. Methadone is a very good thing. Although a lot of medication is based on herbal remedies. And you shouldn't discount the power of the placebo effect."

  "Magic?"

  "There haven't been enough studies to ease my mind about the efficacy."

  I change tack, trying to circle back. "So what are the challenges?"

  "With foreign patients? Language barriers, occasionally. The temptations of the exchange rate. It's very easy and very cheap to get drugs in Johannesburg. Not here, obviously. The problem comes afterwards, when they're in the third phase, out in the real world, staying at a halfway house."

  "What about romance?" I fish.

  "Sex addiction, you mean?"

  "I was talking more about hook-ups."

  "Totally inappropriate, of course. We try to discourage it. I say that because often it's a way of finding a substitute high, something else to latch onto, which ultimately doesn't help the patient."

  "But it happens."

  "It blooms like wildflowers. It's a very vulnerable time. Patients can form intense bonds that won't survive the fresh air of the real world. You're a recovering addict, so you would know. People can be very manipulative. They can end up enabling each other, falling back into old habits. And even if they don't, most of the relationships don't last in the world out there."

  "Any chance I could speak to some of your clie– er, patients? Like Naisenya?"

  "I'd be happy to set up some interviews for you. If you'd like to leave me with your card?" She holds out her hand.

  I pretend to scruffle in my wallet. "Oh, hey. Fresh out."

  17.

  Home>>SA PSYCHWEB>>Aposymbiot Counselling Resources>>Shadow-self Absorption

  Masks of Existence: The Demystification of Shadow-self Absorption

  ABSTRACT

  This paper presents a case for the demystification of counselling approaches for Aposymbiot individuals who exhibit psychic trauma associated with fear of the phenomenon known psychologically as shadow-self absorption and commonly as the "Undertow".

  Whilst acknowledgement must be give
n to religious organisations and lay therapists and their work with Aposymbiot individuals, psychologists cannot ignore the continuing religious stigmatisation of Aposymbiots within society and within the therapeutic community itself. Therapists who themselves, either tacitly or (in rare cases) overtly, subscribe to the idea of Aposymbiots as "animalled" or "zoos" and shadow-self absorption as "Hell's Undertow" or "The Black Judgement" perpetuate this stigmatisation and very often fail to see the very real trauma that Aposymbiots experience as a result of lifelong anticipation of shadow-self absorption.

  This trauma, most often experienced as an irrefutable and ever-increasing sense of oblivion, commonly manifests as an intense obsession with self-annihilation, acted out through extreme hedonism and criminal behaviour, or as a sexualised fetish with self-destruction, as in the well-documented bacchanalia of cults such as the Blood for Severance group, who engage in mass culling of their own animals to actively invoke the terror and rapture of shadow-self absorption.

  Whilst the sensationalism of animal sex and death has provoked the media into ever-increasing coverage of the exoticism of "zoos", society has largely ignored the true meaning of these acts: a desperate rallying cry from Aposymbiots who wish to take charge of their own existence rather than waiting to be led like the proverbial lamb, duck or llama to the divine slaughter.

  Clinicians have a responsibility to heed these calls

  and to change their approach to a more objective, empathetic and scientific understanding of shadow-self absorption, one that will ultimately result in the delivery of more effective forms of treatment.

  Current scientific thought tends toward an understanding of the "Undertow" as a quantum manifestation of non-existence, a psychic equivalent of dark matter that indeed serves as a counterpoint to, and bedrock for, the principle of existence. The process of shadow-self absorption is, in fact, such an integral part of life as we know it, that in Dark Matter, Black Judgement (2005), physicist Nareem Jazaar states: "were intelligent life to be found elsewhere in the universe, it would be impossible to imagine that society without some form of the Undertow."

  This type of understanding of the "Undertow", not as divine judgement but rather as a necessary part of the fabric of the physical universe, can only serve to relieve Aposymbiot individuals of the intense burden of guilt they often carry.

  Van Meer & Reeves et al. (2002) in fact document robust differences in behavioural function between religious and secular Aposymbiot groups and their response to therapy. In the course of their two-year study, the religious group showed markedly increased levels of guilt, aggression and suicidal ideation when compared to the secular and control groups.

  Such studies form the basis for a shift in the clinical and ethical framework with which therapists, and ultimately society as a whole, approach Aposymbiot interaction.

  18.

  Vuyo insists on meeting me at Kaldi's coffee shop in Newtown, the funkified art, theatre, design and fashion capital of the inner city. They burned this neighbourhood down in the early 1900s to prevent the spread of bubonic plague, and it occurs to me that they should consider doing it again, to purge the blight of well-meaning hipsters desperately trying to paint it rainbow. I should really try to be less cynical.

  I squeeze between the tables packed with actors, dancers, trendy new media folk, BEE venture capitalists in suits with no ties, and capitalist wannabes (also in suits, but with ties) who have the ambition but not the office space, and come to use Kaldi's free Wi-Fi.

  Vuyo is late. I check my emails on my phone and eavesdrop on the actorly bunch at the next table who are having a very heated and apparently hilarious debate about a proposed smackdown between David Mamet and Athol Fugard. Then again, they could be rehearsing lines from a play about the same.

  There are another 312 responses to Eloria, including one from a French journalist who wants to do a story, is desperate to fly to DRC right away to meet. Vuyo would milk him for visa application fees, maybe even try to convince him to set up an emergency fund to help evacuate Eloria. I quietly delete it.

  There is also another strangely anomalous message. Again, no return address. Maybe it is time to put up that firewall.

  You said you would love me warts and all.

  I forward the message to my personal address to add to the other one and nearly get bust by Vuyo, who has slipped into the chair opposite me. "Anything interesting?" he asks. He does not apologise for being late.

  "Admin," I say.

  He orders a black americano and waits for the waitress to leave before launching straight in.

  "If someone has the item you're looking for, we don't know about it," Vuyo says. "But that item would be hard to miss. Hard to hide. You would have to be stupid."

  "Bad things can happen even to famous people."

  "Ah, but then someone would have to care. There is an insurance policy on that name, paid for by Moja Records. One point five.

  "As in million?"

  "And on the matching item. They come as a pair?"

  "Twins tend to. Okay, what about the MXit account?"

  "Sorry. Couldn't get in."

  "What kind of slacker hackers are you using?"

  "Hackers are Eastern Bloc scammers. The Company relies on good old-fashioned African business as taught to us by our colonial masters."

  "Bribery and corruption?"

  "So much more efficient."

  "And the phone?"

  "Yes, my friend at Vodacom looked it up for me for a small fee. That phone number hasn't made or received a call since Sunday 20th 02h36."

  "Do you have a record of what number was dialled?"

  "That will cost you extra. Luckily, I anticipated that you would want this." He slides over a piece of paper folded in half. "One more thing," he says, before releasing the piece of paper. "You should see a friend of mine. At Mai Mai. Dumisani Ndebele. A sangoma. He might be able to help you in other ways."

  "Am I paying extra for this as well?"

  "Open the paper."

  I unfold the note. There is an eleven-digit sharecall number. Underneath it is a handwritten scrawl that takes me a moment to decipher. It reads: "Hani Luxury Estates Format" and "Play along".

  "What the–" I start to say, but Vuyo is already standing to greet the sweaty Japanese salaryman with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist who has been directed to our table by the waitress.

  "Ah, Mr Tagawa," Vuyo says, turning the charm all the way up to eleven, "I hope you're not too jet-lagged. This is my investment partner, Lebo Hani, daughter of the great communist leader. But don't worry, she's hundred per cent capitalist. Don't mind the animal."

  "You really are something." Gio's voice on the other end of the line is a combo of admiring and pissed off.

  "Hello yourself."

  "So, I just had this call."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Dr Veronique Auerbach. About Mach's journalist? Confirming that she's lined up some interviews for you. If you're actually doing a story, that is. She seemed sceptical. Suspicious even."

  "Yeah, I'm in the middle of typing up my pitch. Sex, drugs, jet-set travel."

  "I wouldn't have minded. Much. I mean, why would I expect anything less of you?" Gio says. The malice in his voice is justified. After all, I am the girl who stole his ATM card and eight grand out of his bank account, and blamed it on the cleaner.

  "Only she didn't speak to me, she spoke to Montle, my editor. And I had to do a shitload of explaining. So, congratulations."

  "I got the job?"

  "Almost at the cost of mine. Helluva way to pitch an assignment, Zee. I need 1600 words in my inbox by April 23rd. Get some dirt, please. Something sexy."

  "I'm all about the sexy dirt."

  "And the reverse, if memory serves. So, what happens with the Sloth when you have sex?"

  "You want a matching bite somewhere else?"

  "Kinky," he says, but I can tell he's still simmering. "Maybe you can show me sometime. Laters, sweets. I gotta go."


  "Yeah, me too," I say, turning the Capri in a lazy arc under the highway and into Anderson Street and the parking lot of Mai Mai.

  The healer's market is less popular than Faraday, which is conveniently close to a major taxi rank. It looks like a cheap tourist attraction from the outside, with its mudcoloured walls and the spread of herbs drying in the sunshine on the pavement outside the main entrance. Under a thatched deck, a man crouches on his haunches in front of a little urn on top of an open fire, wafting pungent smoke across the parking lot. A German tourist emerges from the toilets, forgetting to zip up his fly, and stops to talk to the guy carving up pieces of old tyre to make sandals.