‘We look to control the reserve as a clear area we can manage, and there’s enough concrete in this place to make sure that the jungle can’t close in on us. Where else can we find something like this?’
‘Well…’ Babalwa, doubtful, remained on her knees. ‘There must be plenty of similar places around the country, nè?’
‘Possibly. But how long will they take to find? How much work will they take to settle to the point where we are now already? How many will be right on the sea in case of miracle sea rescues and to service our need to fish?’ Babalwa snorted. Fishing had not, as of yet, taken place. ‘Seriously, I’ve been thinking about fishing quite a lot lately.’ I rolled with it. ‘It will probably end up being easier than trying to keep cattle.’
She nodded, head down, the corners of her mouth twitching.
‘Laugh, but if not here, then where? It’s going to be fucking tough to start again. And, like it or not, we have started here. And other people chose to start here too.’ I waved at the Donkin pyramid. ‘There was surely a reason why these people decided to start this city here. Right friggin here.’ I jumped slightly on the turf, issuing up a little puff of sand.
I had forced her. Bullied her. Or maybe she had conceded strategically. Not immediately, of course, but as I heaped the pressure on she gave a little, and a little more, and within an hour or two we had – by mutual agreement – decided to stay where we were, peering over the sea into an empty horizon, farming in the sand.
We had a cup of tea.
‘So what do you know about solar?’ Babalwa asked me as we sipped.
‘Less than fuck all. You?’
‘I know that you can only stack three panels to a battery before it blows.’
‘So I guess the question is, where? Where will we find more power than portables? We need better batteries.’
‘When we get the solar thing right we should rig up a player.’ Babalwa topped up her teacup, holding the lid and tipping from the pot in classic English style.
‘Home entertainment? We’ll need to be careful with the movies. When we’ve watched them all it’s repeats for the rest of our lives.’
‘Music would be wild though – somewhere to put all those sticks and things you been hording.’
‘Agreed. Agreed. Movies. Music. Stuff of life.’
‘Roy,’ Babalwa said, pulling out her chair. ‘Can I ask you something personal?’
‘Shoot.’
‘How scared are you? I mean, just like day on day. Are you scared?’ Her voice got a little higher. ‘Because, honestly, some days I can’t get out of bed. I have to pull myself out piece by piece. I mean, you’re out there all the time in your van, with that machete, doing whatever you do. So to me you look fine, but I feel awful. I just want to cry all the time.’ Tears rolled down her cheeks.
‘Come here,’ I beckoned. She rounded the pine coffee table, littered with the patchwork of A4 pages that constituted our farm plan, and sat on my lap, her arms around my neck, like a child.
‘Listen,’ I whispered into the nape of her neck. ‘I keep moving to stay alive.’ She pushed her chin into my collarbone, tears and snot smearing onto my cheek, mingling with mine, creating a mutual river between us. Then she pulled back.
‘Will you bring your mattress this side tonight? I don’t want you in my bed, but I don’t want to be alone either.’
‘Sure.’ My heart skipped, dropped, then picked up again. I didn’t want to sleep with her, per se. Sex was a peripheral consideration. I badly wanted to be wanted, though. To be held, also. To mix energy with her – to dilute myself and gain a little bit of someone else. ‘No problem. No problem at all. I don’t feel like flying solo either.’
Babalwa folded her arms around me again, leaning properly into my neck with her shaved head. She smelled slightly of sweat. Sweet sweat.
‘You got anything decent to read? I got a whole library over there, you know.’
She mumphed snottily into my neck.
I stroked her back slowly, my hand moving in ever-widening circles over the Castle Lager logo.
The next morning the air was thicker than usual, and spotted with smiles. I had dragged my mattress into the kitchen and slept there.
Her toe woke me, prodding against my forehead. She looked down on me, the length of her dramatically extended, my view deep into the inner thigh of her shorts.
‘Hey,’ she rubbed her head and yawned. ‘You a tea or coffee person?’
‘Uh, tea, I guess.’ I grabbed her ankle and gave it a playful twist. She yelped and jumped free. ‘Today we find power, nè? That movie thing has really got me going.’
Our next target was All Power EP, in Kempston Road.
‘Easy, right near our family home,’ said Babalwa. ‘I’ll show you where I grew up.’
II
CHAPTER 16
Refugees
‘Smoke,’ Babalwa said as we caught our first sight of the Jozi skyline. ‘There’s smoke.’
We were about seventy kilometres out. There was, indeed, a small spiral of smoke curling over the right-hand side of the city.
‘Looks like it could be coming from Ponte,’ I said casually, while my heart leapt, fists in the air. ‘Could be anywhere, I suppose – can’t tell from this far.’
‘Where there’s smoke…’ Babalwa wriggled excitedly.
‘There’s something burning,’ I finished coldly. ‘Could mean anything.’
‘Could mean everything.’ Babalwa laughed at my caution.
I ran my tongue through the guillotine gap in my front tooth and grimaced behind closed lips.
The smoke toyed with us over seventy kilometres, shifting the source of its dance as we threaded our way through the splatter of empty cars blocking the highway. Babalwa squirmed ceaselessly, thrilled at the idea of Jozi. My tongue matched her vigour, probing relentlessly, excitedly, for the missing half of my front tooth.
‘There’ll be nothing to see,’ I kept saying to her in the build-up to the trip. ‘It’s not a big city any more. It’s an abandoned pile of glass and brick.’
‘Still,’ she said, refusing to concede, ‘it’ll be fun. Better than pretending to be farmers. We can go shopping. Looting. Whatever. Sandton City.’
As much as I tried to deny it, I was with her. Jozi, as always, held the lure of change.
Once we had the player working, once we had watched that first movie, our PE lives slid into a shambolic routine. We mowed the lawn and trimmed the edges of the reserve. We erected a greenhouse. We decided what to plant. We watched our seeds sprout, and rot.
Theoretically, hydroponics had seemed like the answer. In practice, however, we couldn’t get even the simplest elements of the process right, and after three months we had grown sick, thin and very tired of farming. We roamed further and further, seeking out homesteads and nurseries and smallholdings and farms with vegetable patches. We didn’t score often, but when we did we scored big. One farm in the Gamtoos Valley yielded a truckload. Spinach, carrots, green beans, potatoes – all waiting neatly in a lush garden, right next to the farmhouse.
But that was the exception. Generally we reached far and worked hard for little – the drooping, dying greenhouse mocking us each day when we returned.