by Damon Galgut
He was at the bottom of the quarry. He looked up at the brink on which he had been standing half an hour before. Now he was here. The body of the minister lay nearby. He went to it. It had marks and contusions from its fall. He rolled it over and began to undress it. It was a curious task. Shoes socks pants shirt underpants vest: he took them off and folded them into a pile and stacked them neatly close by. The minister was gross in his nudity and lay bared there like some vast, fantastic slug.
The man went away from him and started to look for a place to put him. There were shallow depressions and holes but nothing that resembled a grave. Then he found a deep hole. It went down into the ground and there were stones lying scattered at the bottom.
He went back to the minister. For the last time he dragged him by the arms. He took him to the edge of the hole and tipped him. He fell and lay there, stiffening. The man jumped down next to him. He covered the body with rocks. It took a long time and his arms were weak and it was getting dark by the time he was finished. The first stars were showing overhead.
He climbed out of the hole again and stood there, looking down. He was breathing heavily and sweating. The rocks were piled in a pyramidal shape as if they were paying homage to something. He walked twice around the hole, but it was too dark to see properly.
Less than an hour had passed since he had swung the bottle. Now as he stood here he experienced time flowing backwards from this moment to that as an attenuated continuum that couldn’t be measured and it seemed absolutely possible that a day or a year or years had gone by. His hands were shaking again. He turned and walked back through the underground garden. Across the cliff-face at the western side of the quarry there was a vine growing. It had dark-green prolific leaves and there were blue flowers on it that gave off a scent. He picked one.
He started to climb back out of the quarry. He couldn’t remember any more how he’d come down and it was too dark now to see properly. When he’d gone a little way he remembered the minister’s clothes. He swore. He went back down and got them and began climbing again.
It was full night now. A cold wind was blowing in from the sea and he could smell salt on the air. He emerged from the quarry at a point almost opposite where he’d started and he had to walk back along the edge, stumbling and lurching in hollows. The sound of frogs came up out of the hole, magnified and quavering on stone. He couldn’t balance himself. His head was hurting and the muscles in his legs and arms felt powerless and lame. He got to the car. It stood there, glimmering whitely in the dark, both the front doors open.
He went to the car. He took out the black robe. He put it on over his clothes. It was meant for somebody much shorter but fatter than him, so that the length was approximately correct. He unpicked the hems and in a scattering of fine thread added several millimetres to it. He walked in it, looking down at himself in the weak glow of the headlamps. He wasn’t laughable. He was haggard and mad and remarkable. He spoke the name of the minister aloud. He paced around, wearing the blue flower in his hair, the wind coming up and the grass hissing.
He took the cassock off again and threw it into the back and got into the car. The seat had been moulded to the contours of a different body and it felt strange underneath him. The key was in the ignition with a metal loop hanging from it from which depended in turn three other keys to doors he would never go through.
He sat for a while behind the wheel, breathing fast. The first bottle emptied of its contents lay spent and transparent at his feet. There was a film of dust on everything in the car as though it had been standing there for years. He stared ahead through the windscreen. There were the corpses of beetles shattered on the glass and their legs and feelers were composed in attitudes of violent expiry.
6
It didn’t take long to reach the town. On the far side of the rise beyond the quarry the road flattened out again and then swung inland and bent sharply left towards the sea. A railway track appeared next to the road. At first he couldn’t see anything. Then a dim scattering of lights appeared in front of him and there were buildings against the sky.
He pulled over at the edge of the road and again got out of the car. He stood there, looking. There was a road sign leaning nearby with three neat bullet holes punched through it. A piece of newspaper tumbled past in the wind. The town was like a ghostly carnival in the distance and he stared at it for a while. Then he got back into the car and put it in gear and drove on.
The town was small and dispersed and ugly. A barrenness of concrete prevailed. The main streets had been tarred long ago but the side-streets were made from gravel. Nothing was taller than one storey. He passed a café, a butchery, a hair salon. Then he was up against the sea. A metal boom stopped him from driving any further and down the length of a rotting wooden quay he saw the massive shifting outlines of fishing boats at berth. He turned around. He had driven the length of the town and he hadn’t seen a single other person.
He parked outside the café. At the till inside there was an overweight man, chewing gum, leaning with one elbow on a dirty fridge. The man nodded to him. There was no response.
‘I was looking for the church,’ he said.
The man behind the till pointed. He went out. He drove again through the deserted streets with their intermittent spectral lamps burning. It was nine o’clock in the evening.
At a cross-roads he came to the church. It was made of wood and brick and had been newly painted white and its steeple rose tapering on the sky. He parked outside and got out. The doors were closed and there was no light inside. He walked behind the building and there was a large house there and voices came from inside. The door was stencilled out in light.
He went to the door and knocked. While he waited he thought that he was about to fall over and he steadied himself on the wall. There were tiny motes moving in front of his eyes and his mouth felt papery and dry.
The door was opened by a woman. She had a blonde beehive of hair. She had no eyebrows but she had drawn a horizontal stroke with a pencil above each eye. In the centre of her forehead there was a round perfect mole.
He said to her: ‘I want the minister’s house.’
‘My husband is the minister.’
He looked at her. Something in his appearance had frightened her. She had taken several steps back.
‘I’m the new minister,’ he said.
She stared at him.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh.’ She smiled. It was clear that she was relieved. ‘You want the other church.’
‘The other church?’
‘The mission church. The one in the township.’ She came out to the car with him to show him. ‘Keep going,’ she told him. ‘Keep on.’
‘Thank you.’
There was a white dog barking shrilly at her feet. She picked it up and held it and stroked it. It had a small bow on its head. ‘Bly stil, liefie,’ she said.
He drove on. She receded into the gloom behind, holding her struggling white dog.
The road that she had pointed out to him ran to the northern end of the town and then went on. The houses with their grey rectangles of lawn disappeared behind. The road was untarred. The car was jolting on ruts and he couldn’t see anything in the headlights except grass leaning and flowing in the wind. He was looking for a place in which to turn around when a figure took shape ahead. He stopped and hooted. The figure turned. It was a man.
‘Is this the road to the township?’
‘Ja. Ja. Ja.’
‘Can you tell me how to get to the church?’
‘I can show you the church.’
‘Get in.’
He did. There was a strong smell of drink in the car. They drove on. A little way ahead the road came to the township. There was debris. He saw people sitting here and there in doorways or standing in groups on corners. They turned their heads to look at him.
He felt a strange uneasiness. ‘Why are they staring?’
The other man laughed. ‘They’re looking at the car,’ he said.<
br />
‘There aren’t a lot of cars?’
‘No, my broer,’ he said. ‘Turn here.’
In the centre of the township there was a huge cement plaza with cracks and flaws running through it and at one end of it there was a prefabricated building with sandbags piled up in front. On the other side, facing it, the church. It was squat and low with holes gaping in the brickwork and only by a dislodged cross canted skewly on its summit did he know it for what it was. He parked.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Valentine.’ He was looking at the cassock. ‘Are you a minister?’
The man shifted. ‘No,’ he said. He didn’t know why he’d said it. They got out.
‘What about my luck?’
Holding out his hand.
The man shook his head. ‘I’ve got nothing,’ he said.
‘Ag, brother. I showed you the church, my brother.’
‘I’ve got nothing,’ he said. It was true.
‘Goodnight, my broertjie.’
He said nothing. He stood next to his car and watched Valentine go diagonally across the plaza. When he reached the far side he disappeared between a café and an empty lot.
The man turned. There were no lights in this church either, no sign of anyone nearby. He went to the wooden door and pushed, but it was locked. He went to the side of the church. There was a house here and he went to the door and knocked. It was opened in a moment by a woman. They looked at each other.
‘I’m Reverend Niemand,’ he said.
7
She was wearing a long flannel bathrobe with tiny faded flowers on it. It was tied at the waist but it looked to him as if there was nothing underneath it. Fine bones and shadows and skin.
She stood aside for him to enter and he came in and she closed the door. He was at the head of a passage that went off towards an open door at the end. There was another door, closed, halfway down. To his right he could see a room that seemed to be a kitchen. There was a table with a plate of half-eaten food on it and a glint of knives and forks lying around.
‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ she said.
‘Yes. I was… delayed. On the way.’
He followed her down the passage. There was linoleum on the floor and there was wallpaper on the walls that had faded till it was almost invisible. His room was the one at the end of the passage, so small that if he had fallen in it his head would have struck the far wall. There was a window that looked out on the plaza. There was a bed, a small desk, a chair. There was a wooden crucifix on the wall.
‘I hope it’ll be all right here,’ she said.
Her voice was cool and polite but felt empty to him as if it were nothing but words. He sat down on the bed. He hadn’t seen or touched a bed or a blanket for three and a half weeks now and he ran a hand slowly over the fibres, feeling them. He heard her voice speaking again and it said you have blood on your clothes.
He looked down. He saw that there were vivid red stains on the front of his shirt and a smear on the leg of his pants. He stared at these marks for a moment with surprise. Then he looked up at her.
‘It’s because of… because of this.’
He showed her the cut on his finger.
‘But you must clean that.’
She took his hand in hers. He became aware that it was trembling violently and pulled it away.
‘I cut it on a piece of wire. Next to the road. When I stopped.’
‘It’s a deep cut.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know. Yes, you’re right. I must clean it. I’ll do it now.’
Still she would not leave the room.
‘I’m very tired,’ he said.
‘Don’t you have a bag? A suitcase or something?’
‘In the car.’
‘You must get it,’ she said. ‘It’s not safe there.’
‘I’ll get it,’ he said. He didn’t move.
Eventually she went out, but she came back in again almost immediately with a bowl of water and a cloth and some Dettol. She set them down next to the bed.
‘For the cut.’
‘I’ll do it now,’ he said.
A glance passed between them. She was a middle-aged woman, slightly underweight, with veins showing in her forehead. Her eyes were a crystalline blue. There was something in her movements that was wary and watchful and he felt remotely afraid.
‘I’ve already eaten,’ she said. ‘But I can get something for you.’
‘I just want to sleep,’ he said. ‘It’s the journey.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
She went out, closing the door. He sat for a long time on the bed. He remembered that she had told him to unpack the car and he knew he had to get up and do it. But from somewhere inside him a lassitude was rising and threatening to envelop his brain. He lay down sideways across the bed with his feet still resting on the floor and his hands pillowed under his head. Just for a minute, he thought. Just for one minute. He heard voices speaking elsewhere in the house or maybe they were speaking in him. He closed his eyes and began to breathe deeply and when he woke again it was morning. The car had been burgled in the night.
8
They had broken one of the side windows at the back. There was a half-brick lying on the seat and a fine dusting of glass. Except for a single sock that lay curled on the floor there was nothing left in the car. All the boxes with the minister’s possessions in them, the clothes, the papers, the books, all gone. The seat looked naked. He stood there, looking at it. He felt that he should do something, that some action was required of him, but he didn’t know what he should do.
It was early in the day and a thin wash of sunlight came down. There were people crossing the plaza, going about their business, and one or two of them had stopped to watch him. A stranger unexpectedly among them. He turned his back and leaned on the car. Thinking what must I do. He bowed his head and suddenly he smelled himself, sweat dirt smoke intermingled, all the complex odours of flight. On the front of his shirt and the leg of his pants the bloodstains. He raised his head and looked up.
She was there. She had come out of the house while he stood there. She was wearing the flannel robe still with its faded impress of flowers and she came walking across the concrete towards him without any shoes on. His feet were also bare. She stopped next to him and both of them stood looking at the car.
‘I told you…’ she said.
He said nothing. He bent down and picked up that single useless sock from the floor and twisted it round in his hand.
‘I’ll get Captain Mong,’ she said.
‘Captain Mong?’
‘He’s the one in charge.’
She gestured across the plaza at the prefabricated building he had seen last night with the sandbags piled up in front of it and a flag hanging limply from a pole. He looked back at her but she wasn’t going across the plaza. She was going back to the house.
In a moment he followed. The door to her room was closed. He went down the passage to his room and stood there, looking around him. There was the desk and the chair and the bed on which he had slept. They didn’t seem familiar to him. He stood there, rubbing his arms. He heard voices behind him in the house and he closed the door of the room and pressed his ear to the wood. Listened. A door, her door, opened. Feet went quickly down the passage. He went to the window and saw the woman emerging from the house. A policeman in uniform was behind her and they walked together to the car.
He moved back behind the curtain and again stood rigid and immobile. His hands trembling. He felt events and objects thickening in collusion against him and began to tear at his clothes. Then the action took on meaning and he got undressed very quickly and threw the clothes down on the bed. His body was long and pale, like a blade. Naked, he ran down the passage but he couldn’t find a bathroom anywhere. He went into her room and stood very still among her things the unmade bed the mirror on the wall shoes lying discarded stockings cigarettes and on her dressing-table a white enamel bo
wl and he remembered the water she had brought him last night and he ran back to his own room again. He washed the clothes in the bowl and scrubbed at them with the cloth. But blood is a durable quantity and isn’t easily undone. His hands were hurting and the clothes were wet but when he put them on the stains were lessened and he didn’t feel so utterly accused.
Then a knock at the door.
‘Yes,’ he said.
She said, ‘Captain Mong would like to speak to you.’
‘I’ll come out,’ he said.
He heard her walk down the passage. He looked at himself in the mirror. Then he followed her. The day was clear. Now the plaza was silent and deserted except for these two tiny figures at the one edge of it near the car. He went to them.
The policeman was standing facing the other way. He turned around slowly. His uniform was clean and immaculate and he was somehow transformed by it so that he was not immediately familiar. He held out his hand to the minister and the minister took it in his and as the two men shook hands they were staring with intent at each other. Then they let go and stood there. But the minister continued to stare. It was a face he had seen yesterday in a washroom mirror and hadn’t thought about again. The mouth swollen redly like some edible fruit, the mole in the centre of the forehead.
9
He followed the policeman across the cracked plane of concrete towards where he didn’t want to go. They passed the red motorbike he had also seen yesterday and went past the sandbags and inside. Through an office with a counter and a pimply boy sitting behind it through a door and into another office. A desk and a filing cabinet and yellowed blinds on the window and a bowl in which a goldfish was swimming. A noticeboard filled with memos and papers and a picture of Jesus on the wall.
The two men sat opposite each other with the surface of the desk between them. The Captain had a white pad in front of him and a ball-point pen in his hand. The minister had nothing. He sat very upright in the chair with his body angled slightly away from the Captain, fingers held together in his lap.
