The Boy Who Could Keep a Swan in His Head

by John Hunt

  Published in 2018 by Umuzi

  an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd

  Company Reg No 1953/000441/07

  The Estuaries No 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, 7441, South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

  umuzi@penguinrandomhouse.co.za

  www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za

  © 2018 John Hunt

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  First edition, first printing 2018

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0966-0 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0983-7 (ePub)

  Cover design and illustration by Sarita Immelman

  Author photograph by Joanne Olivier

  Text design by Fahiema Hallam

  Set in Minion Pro

  Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet.

  For Kim, Michael, Luke and Jade

  And, of course, Denise

  1

  Lickety-split

  /liketi’split/ adverb, informal

  Hillbrow, 1967. The New York of Africa. Apartheid kept the roads clean and the rubbish collected. There were buildings going up everywhere – “lickety-split”, according to Mr Trentbridge. Large chunks of tin-roof houses were found in skips almost every day as the boy walked home from school. These homes were recently surrounded by honest gardens and the occasional peach tree. Someone wrote in The Star newspaper that soon Hillbrow would have more people per square kilometre than Tokyo. Everyone quoted that article to everyone. Some even cut it out and kept it folded in their wallets.

  The boy, who went by the name of Phen, lived in Duchess Court. You’ll find it at 20 O’Reilly Road, Berea. Technically it’s in Berea, but for all intents and purposes it’s Hillbrow. The heartland of Hillbrow, the parallel streets of Kotze and Pretorius, is barely a three-minute amble away. Duchess Court was built in the twenties, solid and grey with flirty bits of art deco. When first constructed it must have dominated the skyline. By the time Phen moved in, though, it had the look of an old, stout woman in a sombre overcoat that had been mended too often.

  Not that the building was without its charm. At its core was the wood-panelled lift with its bevelled mirror, known to all simply as Mr Otis. He waited at the end of the foyer with three cast-iron ladies above his lintel. Joined together, they danced in a chorus line with their right legs held scandalously high. If you opened the heavy wooden door, then slid back the metal gate, the lift would take you a clanking six storeys high. The grill, when concertinaed closed, left big gaps you could peer through. As you faced forward the lift shaft was presented in vertical grey strips that drifted upwards in a slow-motion blur. This was punctuated by six square bursts of yellow if you went all the way to the top. The lift door at each floor had a small glass window allowing you to wave to people as you went past them.

  Stopping was always a violent and inexact affair. Tenants would suggest to newcomers that they lean against the walls or, at the very least, hold on to the polished brass handle of the metal gate as the lift slammed to a halt anywhere between a foot and an inch away from the floor of your choice. The uninitiated would battle to see this as an arrival and presume something had gone wrong. It was only after the metal door had been brazenly slid open that they would sheepishly step up or down and then out.

  Phen lived on the ground floor in number four. His trips with Mr Otis were therefore infrequent or for fun. And a fertile imagination grew more fecund when transport was on hand. There was a time when, based at military headquarters behind the washing line on the roof, he needed to find the V2 rocket base the Germans were using. London was taking a terrible pounding and it was all up to his commando unit. After days of relentless reconnaissance they found the cunning concrete shaft dug six storeys deep into the mountainside. Although they were vastly outnumbered, thanks to the element of surprise the mission was a total success.

  If you sat on the bonnet of Mr Trentbridge’s Ford Cortina and looked at Duchess Court, number four was situated on the extreme right-hand corner. A palm tree, planted years ago, blocked out ninety per cent of the view from the balcony and stretched up to the fourth floor. Doves cooed high up in the fronds as if the tiny strip of green between the building and the pavement was an oasis. Phen often Lawrence-of-Arabiaed around that tree, offering dates and nuts in the form of Wilson’s toffees to the gathered Bedouin tribes. He would need their help if the Turks were to be driven out of the Middle East once and for all.

  With a dishcloth on his head he blew up countless enemy trains as they moved through the desert and up O’Reilly Road. His plunger was a pencil he’d wedged into a hole he’d made in the top of an empty condensed-milk tin. As he rammed it down hard, the dynamite hurled the huge locomotives into the air. Volkswagens, Morris Minors, Fiats and the occasional Peugeot would launch helplessly off the ground and land on their sides and roofs.

  “Tell your men not to waste ammunition, Sharif Nassir. There are still many battles to come for the Harith tribe.”

  It was an easy yet pitiless business finishing them off. Hidden behind the garden wall, his sawn-off broomstick picked them off one by one. It wasn’t pretty but then war never was. He had to remind himself, “Mankind has had ten thousand years of experience at fighting and if we must fight, we have no excuse for not fighting well.”

  The flat itself was bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. He lived in a flat while all the new buildings around him contained apartments. That was typical of words; they changed without rhyme or reason. And when you asked why, no one could give you an answer. His flat wasn’t flatter. In fact, the older buildings had much higher ceilings. And those new apartments were built so tightly together they should be called closements. His father said flats came from Britain and apartments from America. He said those damn Yanks were getting in everywhere.

  If you opened the front door to number four you could turn sharp left into the kitchen or proceed straight into the dining room. The kitchen floor was covered in one flat sheet of green linoleum that bubbled depending on where you stood. You could get the bubble to move but you could never get it to disappear. Much like trying to get the dent out of a ping-pong ball. Trapped air is happy to be transported, but, it will take its ballooned vacuum with it. Concerned visitors even suggested there may be a mouse problem in the kitchen. This, in turn, created such embarrassment for Phen’s mother that his routine job became to force the bubble behind the fridge before anyone came to visit.

  Not that walking in the dining room was without its challenges. Like the rest of the flat, it was all parquet flooring in what used to be a very close-fit herringbone design. Over the years, the perpetual pounding of feet in the high-traffic zones had begun to take their toll. Like a piano with a number of loose keys, the initial appearance of a smooth surface was deceptive. If you stood on the tail of the wrong wooden slat, its head would pop up like a snake ready to strike.

  The most dangerous square lay, innocuously, directly on the path to the lounge. All three hardwood planks were loose and sat next to each other at slightly different heights. If you were carrying a tray you never stood a chance. And if you were a brisk or heavy walker one of the three would often flip out completely and smack you on the shin.

  When Phen had caught his mother crying, even though she’d said everything was alright, he decided to fix the floor in an attempt to cheer her up. H
e was a bit of a hoarder and went straight to the top shelf of his cupboard. Under his two neatly folded school shirts he fished out the OK Bazaars plastic bag. Beside the egg from two Easters ago and the strips of liquorice, now a deep emerald green, he found his stash of chewing gum. He wasn’t sure exactly how long to chew for. After the taste had left, was the stickiness gone too? He decided merely to make the gum moist then pull it out. Each piece was given a minute in his mouth. No more, no less.

  He’d seen pictures of master craftsmen at work and tried to adopt their demeanour. He held the edge of the slats up to the light and frowned at their unseemly roughness. He traced his finger across the ancient lumps of bitumen, then took his mother’s metal nail file and made them smooth. He’d put a newspaper on the dining-room table to catch their falling flakes, but most fell gently into the fruit bowl. Once finished, each six-inch plank was lined up vertically on the sideboard like a row of dominoes. He was uncertain about how to apply the chewing gum. One long stretch? Or a series of blobs?

  After experimenting with both, he decided on the blobs. The measured distance between each mound of gum seemed aesthetically more pleasing and carried a greater sense of purpose. It reminded him of his Meccano set where a series of aligned holes solved everything. This choice demanded more material and depleted his entire reserve. By the time he was finished, a three-year collection of gum lay beneath the dining-room floor. Most were Chappies so he kept the wrappers to read the jokes and Did You Knows printed inside. However, there was also the faint whiff of peppermint and spearmint from other gums. Phen felt proud and exhilarated when he was finished. There is a kind of satisfaction that seeps in when a job requiring physical labour is well done. It’s the sort of feeling that sustains you for quite a while even when no one else notices your handiwork.

  On the south side of the dining-room wall was a door which opened into a cupboard that was so deep it was referred to as the storeroom. The three shelves at the back were packed with the finality of knowing no one was ever going to reach them. On the middle of the top shelf, bristling like a series of broken vertebrae, lay the deformed wire hoops of the record rack. Somehow on its journey in the delivery van from Shotley Residential Hotel, not even half a mile away, the leg of the sofa had been placed on its delicate spine. The wire channels were now splayed embarrassingly wide in the middle and impossibly tight on the opposite edges. South Pacific, Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Gigi and all their contemporaries were therefore forced to lie on top of one other, flat and square. They, in turn, rested upon a hatbox from another age. Now empty, its circular velvet-covered lid captured the memory, if not the contents, of its beauty.

  One shelf below, and slightly to the left, lay the likewise empty hamster cage that had once housed Philby. Phen had been allowed to buy the white hamster provided his father could name him. “That rodent should’ve been behind bars years ago.” Only much later he learned that Philby was a British double agent who’d defected to the USSR. Teeth marks could still be seen where the hamster had gnawed through the pale blue powder coating of his steel feeding tray. Phen had placed the cage there himself, in a solemn ceremony shortly after Philby’s demise. He hadn’t been sure where you put the homes of the dead, let alone the dead themselves. He had wanted to ask, but couldn’t find the courage. He sensed a plastic bag and the dustbin might have been the answer. When he’d returned from school, his mother had given him a hug, said she was sorry and now the subject was closed.

  Which is why, two weeks later, when the hamster wheel began to run wildly deep in the darkness of the cupboard, Phen was at first confused and then elated. He’d read the stories and seen the pictures of the resurrection. He’d pored over those yellow rays that burst from behind dark clouds as white doves, caught in a whirlwind, spun up to heaven. He ran to the door and smote the darkness asunder. The huge black rat was clearly startled by the light suddenly flicking on. However, with size comes a certain confidence. He allowed himself a few extra whirls before darting out the cage door and through a pile of London Illustrated News.

  There was no wall on the north side of the dining room. A sliding door with three frosted-glass panels on each side could be pulled across to meet in the middle, if necessary. Although this very rarely happened, its possibility seemed to make the room more sophisticated. It made you “pass through” on your way to the lounge, the way an important man makes you pass through his assistant’s office before you can get to his. The lounge itself was dominated by the Grundig radio and record player that stared straight back at you. It knew it owned the room. Even the large ceramic bowl of potpourri, forced on its head, couldn’t change that. The sofa and two armchairs tilted towards it, waiting for instructions even when it was switched off. And if its spindly legs made it look like a fat man with skinny calves, there was still no doubt it was the highest-ranking piece of furniture in the entire flat.

  Behind the Grundig the lounge windows looked onto the street. Because of the proximity of the pavement, barely two yards away, a thick lace curtain let most of the light in and kept the peering of most passers-by out. This allowed Phen to stand there and never be noticed. Although the windows stopped halfway, the lace curtain, mimicking the floral drapes, went to the floor. Some days when he didn’t want to be seen from the inside either, he’d wrap himself in the folds and pretend it was an invisibility cloak. On a late Friday afternoon, when the two doctors discussed various options around the lounge table, he stayed enveloped for hours. Even when they called Phen’s mother, he stayed where he was.

  “Could you join us for a while?” the tall skinny one asked his mother.

  Everyone loved his mother. Everyone wanted her to join them for a while. She was beautiful. She always denied it but could never be accused of false modesty. She had a deep acceptance of life as it had been dealt to her and emerald eyes incapable of disguise or guile. Almost everyone stared into her perfectly symmetrical face and full lips with a lust they immediately chastised themselves for having. By way of atonement they’d offer to help in any way they could. Her bedside drawer was full of business cards and scraps of paper from people she hardly knew, all waiting for her call.

  “Of course. Shall I make a fresh pot of tea first?”

  “Wonderful idea.”

  Confident he wasn’t being watched, the fatter doctor rearranged his crotch and spread his legs wide. By the time the kettle whistled, his hands had grown impatient and rubbed the outside of his thighs. The other doctor pretended to make notes, scribbling then crossing out like a man battling with a crossword.

  “No sugar for me.”

  Fatty took two.

  “I’m afraid you have to sign all these papers. Rather daunting, but necessary.”

  Next they held up white envelopes full of pills and wrote long instructions on the outside, as if they were addresses she had to send them to.

  “Correct dosage is critical. I suggest for the halves, you use a sharp blade.”

  “Bread knife won’t do.” His mother’s attempt at humour went unacknowledged.

  Momentarily distracted, the thin doctor referred back to his notes. “Now, this is likewise very important.” He held up a tiny glass ampoule, tapped it, then snapped its neck. With cold precision he plunged the needle into the severed head of the vial.

  “You’ll get used to it. Straight into the hard muscle of the buttock. If we need blood samples, remember to pump the arm to raise the vein.”

  Through a thousand holes, Phen watched his mother practise.

  “Good. Now push the plunger forward; we don’t want any air left in the syringe.”

  The needle squirted in a wide arc, then collapsed in a damp line across the dining-room table.

  “Sorry!” She dabbed at the moisture with a serviette.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.”

  The larger doctor smiled crookedly as if something rude had just happened.

  Although the balcony led off from the left side of the lounge, it was not used muc
h. It was open and therefore had no lace curtain, plus the single palm tree blocked the view like some massive peg leg. Two pots of bright red geraniums tried too hard to bring a little colour to the shadowed corner. Like a pair of bloodshot eyes, they seemed to draw attention to themselves for all the wrong reasons. Their stems were soft and twisted from too much water, their leaves pale and pasty from not enough sun. The balcony did, however, serve one practical purpose. It supplied another way out. If the front door was being guarded, or if the question of homework might be raised on your approach, there was always the balcony side exit. To avoid being betrayed by the bottom hinge, the trick was to move through sideways then leap the wall in a single bound.

  Walking the full length of the dining room, past the kitchen and beyond the cupboard, Phen came to what was rather grandly referred to as the passageway: a dark, stingy channel with no windows. Its bend was so short and sharp, if you looked back after just one step the front room was no longer visible. Due to some architect’s sleight of hand, big became small, wide squeezed to narrow and light disappeared to black. How could the world transform itself in a single step? Having lost the comfort of the dining room and not yet in the sanctuary of his bedroom, this was purgatory on wobbly parquet. It was rimmed by a ridiculously high dado rail painted a cruel midnight blue. This two-inch malicious streak tracked the length of the passageway before jamming itself in a macabre zigzag.

  There were places of refuge in this no-man’s land. The bath and shower behind the first door, the toilet behind the second. But when the night reinforced the interior blackness, sound could be malicious. A thirsty cistern acquired a viper’s hiss. The drip of a tap was amplified by the certainty that it was not there before. A sheet of hanging plastic dotted with mermaids couldn’t stop evil from brewing behind its curtain. While they frolicked in turquoise waves, metal hooks scraped against the rusting rod high above and waited their chance. The shower cap, split down the centre, hung from the taps. Phen wondered where the head was that had been wearing it when the cleft had occurred. Even in winter, he was no longer accused of lingering and using up all the hot water.