The Ghost-Eater and Other Stories

by Diane Awerbuck

  Beside the unfinished highway on the way to Sea Point, a woman brushed up against her car. Her hand reached inside the window, asking for money or a donation. She held her wailing and wailing baby close to her chest.

  Rolling up her window, she drives on. Points of contact are wasted on her. She passes the residence from her university days. It has a morgue underneath it. The whole building was once a hospital. Inside that building, too, people would be wailing and wailing She remembers how the doctors would tell their patients to sing until the anaesthetic took hold. Her memories are becoming confusing; is this memory her own? She gets into her car and is thankful for the silence. The older you get, the easier it becomes to forget things, she hopes.

  The car runs out of petrol near the promenade in Sea Point. A parade of Jewish seniors and drug lords walks by. Their perfume smells of toilet spray. Nigerian store owners crab-walk beside her. The malaise of the day is spent in an unemployed haze. The residue of toilet spray is met with the smell of pea soup and baby powder. The seniors wait out the end of their days without the language to process their pain. Some of them get out of bed only to paint their lips and then to get back in again. Sometimes things are better left unsaid.

  She sits on the rock, terrified of repeating her mistakes. She reminds herself that rock is also copper, magma, aluminium, quantum particles, waves, but ultimately it is just dust. A rock is deferred dust. She envies its transience. Life’s experiences shouldn’t have so much weight.

  She cannot escape herself. She walks from Sea Point all the way to Clifton 4th. She takes a side route, to the back boulders. She keeps her old T-shirt on and black panties serve as a costume beneath it. She begins to swim out, far into the sea, the salt spitting into her. As she is swimming, she sees a man in the distance watching. She waves nonchalantly, trying to evade his gaze. She tries to ignore him but then he is coming closer. He begins to unbuckle his belt while she is still in the water. She paddles briskly to shore, gets up and runs to her car. He doesn’t follow but she continues running, leaving her other earring behind.

  Back to city as the sun is setting. Up to her apartment where she is becoming a professional hoarder. Her home is turning into an intricate museum of kitsch, memory and longing, gathering dust and time. It’s only then that she starts to remember the night again. It’s like wanting to get rid of that stranger in your apartment who just won’t leave. They want to stay, to blot out reality – you want them to leave because they are becoming reality.

  It’s not the scale of the memory that matters but the size of the horror. Her DNA is just an archive of everything that has happened before her. She is a repetition of history. The effect of an injury can appear years after she has experienced it – best not to worry about it till then.

  She often thought to herself that you can only handle a certain amount of complexity before it is time to sleep. She gets back into bed in the same apartment, with the same person, her doctor. She knows him well after all these years. She doesn’t want him to find out where she was in the early hours of the morning. His week has been hard enough, he has his own traumas to tend. He is heavy with his own sense of loss. He is beginning to wake up. He has been sleeping all day and will be at the hospital soon, to begin his night shift. He always stays a little longer at the end of a shift to catch the nurses as they sing together before they hand over to the day staff.

  She takes a Plan B pill out of her pocket, swallows it without his seeing (‘Better never to have been born’, better to forget). She does not bring up what happened at three a.m. at the party Engen. Instead, she kisses him on the forehead and whispers, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

  The Writing Class

  Stephen Symons

  He just stopped coming. Three weeks in and his chair was empty, although no one had really noticed him in the first place. He had stared his way through those writing classes, through the comments, even the readings. He had blinked rarely, with eyes that cut into the musty space between us. I had seen that look many times before. Yet when it had been his turn to read, he read like some birds sing, filling those four or five minutes with something that sounded more like music than just words. Sally, the loud one, had said he had a beautiful voice, a perfect radio voice. I thought a voice like his would simply skip the physics of speech. He had only read one of his stories in the three weeks before his disappearance. It was short but compelling and spoke of a time I had long since packed away. His story altered the colour of the room. His voice seemed to control light. Even the fluorescents had dimmed when he read to us.

  I had arrived early for our fourth class. The room smelt unused and empty after the Easter break. I sat down facing a wall of forgotten books, probably all unread. There were two foolscap sheets on a chair. I picked up the sheets and placed them in the slatted light on the table. I saw his name, started reading and felt myself slipping back.

  Stars

  ‘Ondangwa Tower, Foxtrot Two Niner, vector twee nil zero? Confirm?’

  The Puma rolled away from the base like a whale, its blades slapping at the dusk air. Our section would be dropped sixty kilometres north of the last contact, deep in FAPLA territory. We had to confirm the exact co-ordinates of a suspected ammo dump so the flyboys could drop a couple of fivers right in their laps.

  Our section leader, Staff Volskenk, was an ex-miner with the hands of a boxer and a heart to match. He was a fair man, and any issues were usually solved with swearing and a slap. Typical army stuff. There were eight of us, all conscripts, excluding our Bushman tracker, Lappies. Lappies was built like a wire fence, but he was more wire than fence post. He glided over the veld, always ahead of us, picking at twigs and shovelling the sand with the remains of his army issue takkies. I don’t think I ever saw him eat or drink.

  By the time we were dropped at our Initial Point, the sky had turned purple, with faint streaks of red cloud skimming the horizon. We hiked across nothing but flatness for almost two hours, so when we reached that pimple of rock overlooking the depression, Wilmot christened it Mount Everest. We complained our way up the koppie in the blued evening light. Badenhorst, our overweight machine gunner, did most of the complaining. He whined on about having to lug extra belts of MAG ammo and his chances of being stung by a scorpion. Staff shut him up with a muzzle jab to the kidneys. Badenhorst’s sidekick and ammo handler, Van Tonder, slapped one of the ammo belts and cackled, ‘Ja, Badie, Staff hates bladdy kakbakkers.’

  We reached the summit of our Mount Everest with about ten minutes of daylight to spare. Lappies had already arrived, his eyes fixed on the sky as it roped in the first stars.

  War has a way with landscapes. It can saturate the land with a beauty or oblivion that is never encountered in peacetime. Stars look especially different; they seem brighter, pricking away at the darkness and at our dreams. Perhaps Lappies understood this. Within minutes Staff had spread out a map in the dust and weighted the corners with four fist-sized stones. He orientated his compass and called our radio operator, Pretorius. I liked Pretorius. Unlike Badenhorst, Pretorius was someone I could talk to. He always carried a pocket-sized exercise book with a stub of pencil attached to it, even on patrol. I think he wanted to be a writer.

  The radio crackled static as Staff confirmed the grids.

  ‘Two Niner Zulu! Two Niner Zulu! This is Bravo Leader, over!’

  ‘Proceed, Bravo Leader.’

  Once the grids had been confirmed, Staff surveyed the depression with his binoculars and that’s when we spotted them. Their skittish firelight had been hidden by the dusk, but as the darkness deepened it gave away their camp piece by piece. There must have been about thirty FAPLA down there, eating their dinner of samp and offal. We surveyed them in silence. Their laughter and the smell of bad meat were lugged up the koppie by the crisp night air. Our Mirages would vaporise them before their morning piss. A guard was posted, and not a word was said as we tried to puff the cold from our sleeping bags in that strange space of half-sleep. Lappies sat out the ni
ght, welded to a large, flat outcrop of rock, silhouetted in an army blanket, watching his ancestors hunting across the Milky Way.

  At first light Staff Volskenk explained our role in the attack.

  ‘Okay, manne, set up a firing line on the ridge. Check your sights, and Badenhorst, no kak, hey. Use tracer, I want to see where the hell you are shooting. No shooting until I say so. Wilmot, I’m talking to you! Fok, man, listen!’

  Suddenly the radio hissed, ‘Bravo Leader, Bravo Leader Victor Victor! MiGs inbound, take cover.’

  Within seconds of the radio’s warning, two Angolan MiG 21s cracked open the sunrise, contrails feathering off the wingtips into the dawn haze. I could see the lead pilot’s white helmet clearly beneath the reflections of the plexiglass canopy as he turned his machine on its wingtip, hoping to get a better view of the terrain. The FAPLA camp erupted in cheers. Some fool even let off a few salutary rounds.

  It was over in seconds. The MiGs levelled out, waggled their wings in acknowledgment and headed home for breakfast. Badenhorst let out an almighty ‘Bladdy hell! That was close!’ Our Mirages were due shortly. We had fifteen minutes to set up our killing field. As I checked my R4, I kept looking at Lappies and the way his eyes took us all in, into his universe of dunes, ancestors and now-vanished Eland.

  I turned to Pretorius, who was scribbling in his exercise book. ‘Hey, Johan. I wonder what Lappies’s Bushman name is? Do you reckon it’s something we could pronounce?’

  Pretorius looked at me and yawned, ‘No idea, boet, but I wish I had a camera to photograph the little raisin.’

  They came with no radio warning, two silent insects at the speed of sound. They were over us in seconds, filling the sunrise with a massive sonic boom. The Mirages pulled up as one, and lobbed four 500-pound high-explosive bombs in slow motion towards the depression. Two fell short, one failed to detonate and the fourth exploded right on target in a divine flash of white phosphorus that set off the buried munitions. We all ducked instinctively. I thought of the FAPLAs who were caught in the open as I watched the shockwave whip Wilmot’s bush hat clean off his head. Lappies had nocked an arrow in his frail bow. Was this his war too?

  Within seconds the Mirages had vanished to a rumble in the blue. We waited for the dust to clear. Wilmot was doubled over in a coughing fit, hammering at the earth. Staff gave him a klap on the back, shook him by his webbing and told him to focus. Not all the FAPLAs were dead. I could see at least four or five emerge from the dust cloud in a drunken stumble, some still in their underwear, hands holding their heads in place. They were all painted white in the flour-fine dust of the explosion. One dragged his sleeping bag behind him in a daze, leaving a smooth trail of black ash from the blast area.

  Without moving his binoculars from his eyes, Staff said, ‘Okay, on three, commence firing.’ He shuffled over to Badenhorst and tapped him on the shoulder, indicating that he should direct his fire in a sweeping arc across the oblivion of bodies and debris. The army knew that at two hundred metres a man is reduced to no more than a cardboard target. The distance sucks the brother, father and son out of the equation and makes the killing easier. The dust would help too.

  I picked a target and waited until he filled the sights of my rifle. He looked unscathed and that made me feel better. He wore an olive drab overall, with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. He looked like a gardener who was late for work. My first round threw a spurt of white grit about a metre in front of him. He dived towards what looked like a scraping in the salt pan. Beautiful arcs of tracer from Badenhorst’s MAG had ignited the skeleton of the FAPLA camp. The noise of the carnage was unimaginable.

  I tried to slow my breathing and shifted my aim to about an arm’s length ahead of the overall. I fired three shots and the steel butt kicked three times into my shoulder. I must have hit him in his lower back and foot. The gardener tried to get up to his knees, but slipped to his green elbow and then clawed at the dirt before rolling over in surrender. That was it: I had killed a man on a Monday morning and felt nothing but the taste of dust and cordite in my cracked mouth.

  What followed felt like a deep bruise, a swelling of quiet that would grow in all of us. The blast area looked like a large splash of paint, with blackened men and shrubs splayed out from the centre. The morning birds had resumed their singing and the sun continued rising. We turned to laughing, swearing and herding the spent shells.

  Later, I was on my haunches, rolling my sleeping bag into my pack. It was the first and last time our eyes made contact. Every line on his face flowed towards two black marbles floating in bloodshot pools of yellow.

  Lappies half-smiled and then spoke,

  ‘Yes, meneer,’ he said, pointing towards the depression, ‘Those dead men will become stars. They will be dancing around the moon tonight.’

  Before I could reply he jogged off ahead of the section.

  Staff clapped his hands and said, ‘In two minutes – twee minute – the train is leaving.’

  Two weeks later, I was boarding a C130 at Grootfontein, homeward bound, just like that Simon and Garfunkel song.

  I put his story down. The ruled strips of light on the table had dimmed. I looked to the window above the sink, framing a large cloud that was hiding the sun.

  Sally, the loud one, arrived. She shouted a hello and started talking.

  ‘Did you get the group mail from what-his-name? The quiet guy with the nice voice?’

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh. I did. No message, but there was a photo attached.’

  ‘A photo of what?’

  ‘A photo of him standing in the bush. Looks like he’s packed up and headed north. Somewhere in Namibia, or one of those places that have Bushman paintings.’

  I looked at the two foolscap pages in the fading light and felt that deep ache so many of us were left with. I thought of him, up north, watching the sky turn to blood, and wondered if his bruise would ease after all these years.

  Places to Stay

  Tom Schwarer

  When I left, I stayed, the first night, in a single room in a house that a friend lets to university students. I stayed two nights. He had black satin sheets on the bed.

  Then I moved to a closed-in veranda room in another friend’s house. It was walled on three sides by windows covered with thin blinds. The bed was comfortable. The view from her house is beautiful, and it is right up the hill from my old house, so it was an easy stroll down to meet the kids to walk them to school. I stayed for a week.

  I moved into a room in a house out by the cemetery, and stayed there four months. The house belongs to a friend, who is the mother of a friend. She rents a room. I rearranged the furniture: I switched the bed and wardrobe around, and moved the desk away from the bay windows so I could move the armchair in to catch the sun in the mornings, and TV in the evenings. I kept the room pretty straight and tidy. She has a Moroccan flag over the sink, but it turns out to be needed only for the feng shui of its pentacle. She has been married, and has children and grandchildren, and has seen everything that I have seen and a whole lot more, so it was good to stay there and get some perspective. We shared a bathroom. I did my laundry and hung it on the long line in the back garden. The kids stayed over – but it was cramped. I drove a scooter. To work and back, and out at night, along the winding road into the city suburbs where my friends stay. The house backed onto the cemetery and one night when I drove home a pack of homeless dogs was lurking around the cemetery gates. Only their heads moved – watching as I passed.

  For a week I looked after a flat for a friend. His flat is very well appointed, open-plan, with wooden floors and large windows looking over the harbour lights. I listened to Cat Power on his stereo and worked at his dining room table.

  Then I looked after a house for friends who were emigrating – and had gone down the coast for a family holiday. It is a big double-storey house, with a creaky wooden staircase and a lazy cat. I moved some furniture into the downstairs lounge, and the kitch
en is downstairs, and a bathroom, so after two days I moved the bed downstairs as well, and never went back upstairs. I had the kids to stay – there was space for them to sleep over. I stayed there for three weeks, and my friends came back from their holiday.

  So I moved in with my sister – to an upstairs room in her house – for a week. I didn’t unpack. I laid a mattress on the floor and I hung curtains to keep the light from the streetlights out.

  I moved back to the big double-storey for another month. The monkeys got in, and ate all the cereals and two-minute noodles, and crapped on the floor. I cleaned the kitchen completely. I got used to the new neighbourhood – it is a very upbeat neighbourhood, with bars and restaurants on the main street. It is close to the beach – about four minutes on the scooter. When the kids came over I went to get milkshakes at the fish & sushi place, and to get videos from the Blockbusters. We walked to the Spar and bought doughnuts and jelly and custard. The house got sold, and the new owners found tenants.

  So I moved back with my sister, into a room off the lounge. I hung curtains, and pushed the sewing table to the side and made a comfortable room. I brought in a small desk fan. Her house is just over the ridge from the ocean, and faces inland – west – so she gets the sunset from her veranda.

  And then I moved into the flat.

  It is on the seventh floor of an old building, on the Berea, with an old trellis-gate elevator in the stairwell. It has a view down over the city and the sea, and the harbour. Sometimes I see the moonrise – a gigantic thick golden moon. At night I can see all of the city lights, and the lights out over the harbour, so silent. In the evening, from the other side of the flat, the sun’s last rays quietly colour the neighbourhood buttery and warm. Birds fly past the windows. I have hung curtains, and rearranged the lounge and bedroom at least ten times. I have replaced the cool white light bulbs with warm white. I have set up a stereo system, and laid the table, and cooked a chicken and bought a kettle and planted three basil bushes in big 800-gramme tomato tins. I have bought an iron and cleaned and ironed my shirts. I have set up a room for my daughter, and a room for my son. Each night, I draw the curtains, and sleep in the deep, quiet darkness of the flat, and I don’t dream at all. And each morning the sunrise comes flooding in – a big brilliant dead-set red, burning its way up over the ocean, opening wide the sky.