by Mark Winkler
“You’re a hundred years out,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, you’re a hundred years out.”
She blew out a thin stream of smoke that feathered into the air. Then she laughed. “I thought you said I’m a hundred years old,” she said. “I was about to beat you up.”
I laughed because she did. She was old. Not that old. “That chair,” I said. “It’s early twentieth century. Biedermeier was early nineteenth.”
She looked down at the chair, left and right. As though the new information might make it suddenly collapse. “Who would have thought,” she said. “I suppose I like the word. Biedermeier. Germanic. Clean, cold lines. Expensive. And fucking uncomfortable, actually.”
“It’s a Le Corbusier,” I said. “Or close. If it was real, it would be worth a lot more than five grand. It’s shiny and the leather looks good, so it’s probably a reproduction. Five grand should be fair.”
“Do you like tea?” Madge asked.
I liked Madge. She always gave me the time of day. She fed me tea and biscuits. I’d have preferred coffee. I didn’t say so. I liked that she didn’t expect an autobiography out of me. I liked that she didn’t seem to care where I came from or where I didn’t. Or where I was going. She asked about the things in her shop. I could place some of them. Others I couldn’t. Like the pointy-tit African thing that was attached to some kind of lyre or violin. And the dragon-leg Chinese table. Maybe they were dogs and not dragons. Who knows? Madge wrote notes in a diary that was four years out of date. The diary was tiny and had a blue plastic cover with a white bank logo on it. The bank wasn’t even around any more. Sometimes she would point out something herself and get it dead right. She was much more interesting than media sales. Selling ad space is always the same. Madge was always a surprise.
“How come you know so much about antiques?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “How come you know so little?”
Before Madge got sick, I’d visit her two or three times a week. We started going on buying trips together. We’d go to Swellendam and Tulbagh and Stanford. We’d try to convince farmers and shop owners to relinquish their treasures more cheaply than they wanted to. We’d pile our pickings in the back of her old Variant. Madge paid with cheques that would bounce a week later. She was younger then. Sellers often had to jumpstart her car. Just to make us go away.
Sometimes we’d have to share rooms. I’d spy on her from under the sheets. I’d sort myself out after she’d fallen asleep. Mostly people thought I was her son. In the middle of a negotiation she’d play it up and put an arm around me and make a comment about varsity fees. How outrageous they were. She would sometimes carry on even after a discount had been agreed. The enamelled signs and the oil canisters. The drop-side tables and padlocked bibles. The ship’s lanterns, jonkmanskaste, hat stands, Welsh dressers, rocking chairs.
And then the cancer came. Our buying trips stopped. She had a shop full of shit anyway. There was more stuff in storage units in Woodstock. Her hair fell out. She lost twenty kilograms and put on twenty years. I suppose she thought that the shop’s contents and the stuff in storage would last until she died. I began to visit her more often. Lunchtimes. After work. Saturday mornings, sometimes.
One night I couldn’t sleep because I was trying to work out how I could make myself not like her any more. She was going to die sooner or later. I didn’t want it to hurt. Me, I mean. It’s easier when the person who goes away is someone you don’t like. Because you just don’t like them. Not because you don’t want to like them. I began to plot a way to make Madge hate me. I gave up. It was much harder than trying to make Eric hate me. Or Sonia, which would have been easy enough. I seemed to be succeeding with Sonia anyway. Madge and I talked about chemotherapy. We talked about antiques that weren’t, and obscure books and strange movies. It was nice to be an undergrad again. We talked about wigs and scarves. This naturally led to conversations about transvestites and ladymen. I laughed when Madge did. We talked about today. What was missing was any demands on me. I liked that especially.
I decide to walk home
I decide to walk home after I leave Madge and her theories of love and killing. Usually I take a taxi. A tuk-tuk, actually. They’re stinky little three-wheeled things. The hill up to Pansyshell Park tests the limits of their ability. There’s always a great buzzing. You could probably walk faster. The blue smoke sucks back into the cabin where the passengers sit. The greasiness of the tuk-tuk’s two-stroke. There are no-smoking stickers in the little cabin. I can’t be the only one who sees the irony in this.
The brightness returns as I walk. It’s a photoshopped world. Everything is HD. The cars. The shop signs. At Café Paradiso there are the kind of people I’m not. Enjoying hard-to-pronounce lunches in neon clothing on a Tuesday. Glasses of luminous wine frosty in the heat. Tuesdays are when people like me work. It’s not a day to be away from your desk. Not a day to be asked to kill somebody. I’m trying to think. I can’t. The mental indigestion is nice, in a way. It provides no outcome. Kloof Street is longer when you walk it. It gets steeper towards the top. It’s different when you run. When you run you actually want the steepness and the hurt. Walking because you have to is just plain tedious. I pass the laundrette. Forty-nine steps further on, I remember that I’d dropped off a shitload of stuff on Saturday. I walk backwards down the hill. The hot bright world reverses its spin for a moment. I imagine walking backwards for the rest of my life. I imagine walking backwards for so long that I reverse through the years at the newspaper. Reverse through the drinking at Eric’s and the shooting of the breeze with Madge. Reverse through the world to when Madge wasn’t sick. Crazy maybe, not sick. I hit a lamppost just in time. Any more backwards-walking and I would have spun the world back to the Time Before. To scabs being picked open and covered holes undug. The bin attached to the lamppost catches me in a kidney. A flash of pain. Probably what Madge feels twenty-four seven. All over her body. I put Madge aside and go to the laundrette. Pay for my stuff. Walk home.
Mrs. du Toit darts into the lift just before the doors close. “Laundry?” she says. It’s a red day. A repeat of the white day. Everything’s red. Red tights, red sleeveless top. Red shoes. I wonder if she’s shaved yet. The door shuts out the sunlight. It keeps in the brightness. The red of her outfit glows. It almost hurts to look at it. Her skin glows too, like candle wax with a flame behind it. I can smell the grease of the lift and something soft and floral and warm percolating through it from Mrs. du Toit’s corner. She’s an aromatherapy candle. Red and fragrant and glowing.
“Huh?” I say.
“Laundry?” she repeats, more slowly.
“Yup,” I say.
“Ag,” she says. “Come do it at my place next time. The tumble dryer works brilliantly.” The porn movie continues. She laughs. I see fillings. Her laugh opens my mouth.
“How about a drink later?” I say. It just comes out. She can say yes or no. She doesn’t have to throw her head back and show me her fillings again. The lift makes its lift noises. The door opens on our floor with a ping. I hold the button down so that she can get out. So that she can go and join her phantom husband in her flat and leave me alone.
“Okay,” she says.
I set the alarm for five. I close my eyes and instantly can’t sleep. It’s not the light. I only ever sleep with a light on. No. There are twenty-four hours’ worth of spreadsheets projected on my eyelids. The numbers dance and duck and dive. They make no sense and then they do and then they don’t again. At one point I have a flash of doubt. I wonder if we should have approached the whole proposal differently. I fall asleep at about two. I’m going to shower and shave when I wake up. Put on some of the clean clothes from the laundrette. Splash on the cologne that Sonia gave me on my first anniversary at the paper. Take Mrs. du Toit to Eric’s. When the alarm goes I slap it repeatedly. I eventually get up at six. I do
all those things I’ve promised myself. Shower, shave and so on. Knock on Mrs. du Toit’s door. It’s a black night. Black tights, black sleeveless top, black shoes. Her eyes are puffy.
“Sorry, I worked all night and overslept,” I say.
“That’s okay,” she says. What I hear is, “Vat’s okay.”
We take a tuk-tuk to Eric’s. I don’t have a car. Cars are for people who want to go somewhere. I can’t exactly ask Mrs. du Toit to drive. Eric looks at me funny when we walk in. I look around for Sonia. I’m thinking of what to say to her. Not that she’s going to be here after last night. Nobody is here, in fact. Nobody important. Just one or two guys from the newsroom. There’s a girl with them. She looks about fifteen. An intern, I suppose. The journos are trying to impress her. It’s working. We find a booth away from the bar and the journos. Another first for me. We drink. We talk. I don’t know what we talk about. All sorts of shit. It doesn’t matter. It’s just words. What they are isn’t important. As long as they don’t dig and probe. At some point she slips a foot out of a black shoe. The foot is on my shin, my calves. Then between my thighs. I can’t remember if my socks have holes in them or not. I look up and there’s nobody else in the pub. Eric is nodding towards the door. Mrs. du Toit and I have had a lot to drink. I tell her we should go.
Of course we end up fucking. Her bed is neatly made. There are posies of fresh flowers in little vases on either side of it. She knew this was going to happen. I hate it when people pre-empt you. She doesn’t even know me. First she goes to the bathroom. She half-closes the door. I spy on her. I’m hoping she’s going to pee. Instead she picks up a glass and swallows some pills. She’s grinning when she comes back. Mrs. du Toit peels off her black clothes. Her legs are long and strong. Hourglass hips. I’m lying on the bed with all my clothes on. Even my shoes. I worry about the condition of my socks. Mrs. du Toit’s goodies are hidden by black frills. She has a bit of a paunch. She takes off her bra. I see she’s done her armpits. Once released, her breasts are enormous. She has areolas like dinner plates. There are little pet nipples dotted all around the real ones. As if she’d be happy to feed a school of remora fish or orphaned babies all at once. Finally she slips off her black panties. She has a great big fantastic arse straight out of a fifties’ swimsuit calendar. Her fanny has a strip of hair down the middle. She probably shaved it herself. It leans to one side like an exclamation mark Bugs Bunny might use. “Yee-hah!” she shrieks. She launches herself at me. I’m still worried about my socks.
There is no alarm clock on the table beside Mrs. du Toit’s bed. I reach for my phone. It is already eight. A slice of sunlight falls between the curtains. For a moment I don’t know if it’s Saturday or Sunday. It’s Wednesday. I’m supposed to be at work by eight-thirty. My left arm is wedged under Mrs. du Toit’s cheek. My pinkie and ring finger are both numb. Her mascara has gone awry again. It looks like she’s been punched in the nose. It’s so very beautiful. Her breath smells like night and booze and probably like my cock. I can’t tell. I can’t remember anything beyond her pouncing on me. Now Mrs. du Toit is smiling in her sleep. I suppose the downside of last night is that I won’t hear her doing herself for a while. I move my arm and she makes a noise like a cat. I wriggle my arm out. She doesn’t wake up. I have a morning erection. Of course I am tempted to sink it into her. While she is still asleep. Her one leg is drawn up almost to her chin. The other is stretched out behind her. It looks as if she’s running. Or trying to jump over a ditch. Between them lies an easy target. Trusting and vulnerable. She smells like yesterday. I go to her bathroom and pee for ever. My hard-on disappears. I wonder how my clothes might look in her washing machine. Or in the dryer we sweated and stank to install. I pull on my jeans and sneak the short distance to my flat. Have a shower and wash the forty years of Mrs. du Toit off of me. Go to work to face Wednesday.
My headache has almost gone by the time I get to the office. Sonia is being talked at by Dino. I’m sure he thinks I’m gay. I’m not. Been there, tried that.
I think.
Sonia doesn’t see me sneak to my desk. Ally comes back to me with a few small changes. It’s late afternoon when Sonia comes shrieking into my cubicle. She’s brandishing the client signature on a scanned thing. She wants to go to Eric’s to celebrate. I turn her down. Her eyes widen. I’ve never before noticed the white bits of her eyes around the blue. The deal makes up pretty much my entire target for the year. It’s only February. “Don’t clap, throw money,” I say to her. I’m pissing her off. I’m trying to. I have more money than I need. It’s piling up in a bank account. I don’t know what the big thing is with money. I don’t want to go to Eric’s. The truth is I’m on to something more interesting at the moment. A great soft laughing thing. I don’t care that Mrs. du Toit is ten or twelve years older than me.
It’s the Thursday after the Wednesday. There we are again. Me sockless, Mrs. du Toit skewly shaven, her areolae like twin rising moons. An empty bottle of faux champagne is on the bedside table. We’re eating each other like lunch. Her belly slapping against me. It’s the laughing I’m not used to. Maybe it’s the pills. Are they meant to keep her laughing, I wonder. Or just on an even keel?
The next day Madge leaves a message on my phone. I am to be at her flat on Saturday afternoon. She gives the address. Mrs. du Toit notices my morning glory. I am late for work again.
I’ve never been to Madge’s place. It’s a flat in Gardens. The block smells of old burp. I’d imagined that she lived in a treasure chest of the kinds of things we used to buy on our trips. In a rambling mansion with paint peeling from the woodwork. Mossy flagstones and sunlight dull on dusty wooden floors. Mismatched candles askew in huge pewter candelabra on a table as long as runway. A big brindle dog dozing in the sun. She doesn’t. Madge’s flat is tiny and bare and smells like shit and medicine. It looks onto the branches of a dead tree. Behind it is a brown brick wall. Pipes come out of it.
“The details,” Madge says.
It cannot be a suicide. That’s what’s been holding her back. She is Catholic. I didn’t know this. For me religion is like a car accident. Fascinating to observe, horrifying to be involved in. Catholics don’t bury suicides in consecrated ground. Suicides don’t go to heaven. It sounds mediaeval. It can’t be that hard to persuade them. Or God. It’s 2014, for heaven’s sake. Also, she has a life policy. It won’t pay out on suicide.
Then she tells me her dodgy nephew is the beneficiary.
“Change it, Madge. There’s time,” I tell her. “What’s he ever done for you? Where has he been for the last four or five years? Fuck him.”
Madge stares at me. “Oh, so you want it?” she says. She’s being an uncharacteristic bitch to me. I can see she knows that. I don’t think she can help herself.
“He’s an arsehole, Madge. You’ve told me so yourself. Two months and it’ll all be gone.” On casinos and cheap crack. Alcohol and whores.
“That will be two months after I’ve gone,” she says. “So double you tee eff.” She spits out the acronym. Then she softens. “Anyway, what would you do with it?”
I look at her hard.
“If it were yours, I mean. If you were in my situation.”
“Give it to a kennel or to people who feed African kids.”
“We are in Africa. He is an African kid. You make it sound like they all live in Niger or Malawi.”
“I meant poor kids, small ones, if that clarifies. There are starving, raped, abandoned AIDS kids right here. There are kids down the road who can’t go to school. So kids who’ve pissed away every opportunity shouldn’t qualify.”
“Hah,” she says. It’s what she always says when she’s lost an argument. She stares at the pipes growing from the wall outside. I’ve never seen her sadder. “It’s not just the nephew and the life policy. It’s not just the Catholics. It’s sixty or so years’ of life, Nate.” There’s the dead husband, she says, who watches over her all the
time. It’s the friends she’s accumulated over decades. She will categorically not attract any guilty sympathy. And there’s history too, she says. The sixties. The seventies. Psychedelia. The tentacles of Haight-Ashbury reaching even here. Creeping in under the Calvinist conservatism of 1970s South Africa. Sharing drugs. Spreading legs. Breaking hearts. The ones who survived are old friends now. There is pride, she tells me. Pride precludes pity and knowing looks.
“Pride?” I say. I’m trying to imagine her friends. I can’t.
“I don’t have much else. And it’s getting harder by the day to hang onto it.” She stands up, rummages in a cupboard. She pulls out a bottle of Johnnie Black. Its shoulders are covered with dust. Whisky doesn’t go off. She tries to twist the top. Gives up. Hands me the bottle.
“Single or double?” I ask.
“Neither,” she says. “That would be the worst. I haven’t been able to drink for eighteen months.”
I pour her a lime and soda. I pour myself a triple. I add another finger. I knock some back, top it up again. There’s no ice. The whisky burns in my throat. I sit on the orange couch. Madge sits on a stiff-backed wooden thing. It looks Victorian. I’m sure it has a little knob carved into the back so that you can’t slouch.
“What’s next?” Madge says.
Again she’s lost me.
“A hospice where they’ll clean up after me as I expel ever more from my various orifices. Doctors I don’t know and nurses who don’t care. Tests and more tests. Drugs and more drugs. Pointless and vain. Like Canute, stopping nothing, least of all the pain. And then it finally ends with a whimper. Do you know that the last orifices are within the skin itself, that your fluids leak through your pores at the end?”
She sips her lime and soda. I can see she isn’t enjoying it. Then she smiles. “I want to go with a bang. Not much of a bang, just a bit of a one. I can’t go trickling to a stop. I won’t, you know.”
