‘So you weren’t rich.’
‘Eish, no. Just bought my first car. Tiny BMW.’
‘But happy?’
‘Crazy happy. Crazy happy, boss. It was a miracle, for someone like me to fall into this stuff and find money in it. The shock of my life.’
‘But you’re good, hey. I mean, it’s so obvious. You’re a really talented artist.’
Javas laughed. A good, long, cynical laugh. It came right from his belly. ‘I’m not an artist’s ass, Roy. I’m a guy who learned how to weld and met some people in sunglasses.’
CHAPTER 36
Kids and grannies scrambled
So that was it. The ability to weld and the good fortune that arrives with people in sunglasses. The critics called it his ‘genuine humanity’.
I agreed with the critics. Javas was humble and thoughtful, and both characteristics found form in his art, in his creatures, his monsters, who weren’t trying to prove anything, or win any competitions, or better anyone else working the block. They were complete and confident on their own, and that was thanks to their creator.
Javas forced me into a reciprocal effort. Tired of ‘I was an advertising drunk’ and the crass simplicity of my time as Mlungu’s manager, I scratched around for something a little more genuine. Eventually I settled on cheese.
Our agency was hired on the Dairy Board account, and I was given cheese. I stole a very old idea from the Americans, tweaked it a little and got the credit. It was simple enough. We put the Dairy Board and a pizza house together. The board subsidised the development and promotion of an uber-cheese pizza – with twelve times more cheese than a regular. It was a giant success, in every sense, and changed the standard across the country. Cheese volumes went through the roof, kids and grannies scrambled for the giant pizzas, and the fattening-foods debate only sparked more exposure and more sales. The Dairy Board was ecstatic, and I was personally responsible for adding at least two extra inches to the national waistline.
‘Cheese,’ Javas tutted. ‘Cheese.’ He was only half laughing. ‘I had no idea things like that happened. Cheese.’
We left it at that. His monsters. My cheese.
CHAPTER 37
Picking and biting
The excitement grew. Like one of those really old movies about going into space. The ones with Clint Eastwood or Ed Harris or Burt Reynolds, where the wives flutter around making sandwiches and staring up at the moon, kids under wing.
With every successful simulator trip they (we) allowed themselves (ourselves) to crank it up a notch. Plans were laid for which plane to use, a not insignificant question. They (we) settled on something small (but not too small, pleaded Tebza), but when they got into the cockpit it bore almost no resemblance to the simulator.
The simulator turned out to be for a fighter jet – but it took over six weeks to discover this. It seems bizarre in the telling, but this is how things actually happen. You jump in the simulator, learn how to fly, presume the best and ask the important questions later. Only once Tebza was successfully taking off and landing regularly did anyone think to question what kind of plane he was learning to fly.
And so we stalled. None of us were foolish enough to think Tebza could fly a fighter jet – even a small one. We would have to find another simulator, and another method.
The failure sent Lillian into a crushing decline. I frequently found her in strange corners, peering into the middle distance, picking and biting at her fingernails. Once I made the mistake of enquiring after her mental health and in reply she delivered, in shocking and extended detail, an exposition on the fundamental differences between the USA and South Africa. It was a searing monologue, born of a great deal of frustration. The only thing the two places had in common was their obsession with God. Otherwise, it was extreme contrasts and damaging mirror images. She rattled them off (ethics, innovation, music diversity, national planning, tendencies towards a feudal state, physical security, consequences for actions, entrepreneurial culture, etc., etc.), but while she began the tirade powered by a tart, ironic sense of humour, this ebbed as the list grew and eventually she was, knowingly, and semi-ashamedly but still unable to stop herself, dragging me through a pool of her own bile.
She tailed off eventually. ‘I’m sorry, Roy, I am,’ she said. ‘I just want to go home.’
‘But Lillian,’ I replied, squeezing her shoulder tentatively, ‘do you really think there’s a home to go to?’
‘Well, I’ve got to, don’t I? This can’t be it. We can’t be it.’
I went running.
I milked cows.
I slaughtered chickens.
Fats eventually emerged from his rejuvenated office to pronounce that, based on his reading and research, a commercial Boeing was our only option. A simulator was unable to replicate the physical forces involved in piloting a small plane, which ultimately required hands-on-the-stick experience. Fighter jets and other types of army planes were too powerful and risky. Commercial passenger planes like Boeings, on the other hand, were almost completely automated. Once you knew what you were doing, it was simply a question of telling the on-board computer to follow the flight plan.
‘How do you create a flight plan?’ Gerald asked.
Fats brought the answer back from the OR Tambo International pilot-training centre, which included a full simulator, instructions on how to file flight plans, and everything else anyone wanting to learn to fly a Boeing could possibly need.
Yet again, none of us could figure out how we missed it. Lillian accused me of a lack of thoroughness and/or vision. I took the blow, although we had all been to the airport several times, and none of us had come close to the training centre.
We moved out to Kempton Park to repeat the process.
CHAPTER 38
A month
A month to rig up the solar panels.
A month to get control of the simulator and figure out how to program a flight plan.
A month to fuck around nervously.
CHAPTER 39
No emergency vehicles
Tebza and Lillian were dead in a second.
We watched.
We gripped each other, thrilled at seeing the plane fly, unable to let ourselves believe it was true – that they were up there, in a Boeing. The plane lumbered into the air like there was a real pilot in it and disappeared through the clouds. To me the angle looked steep, like they should have levelled off at some stage, but they kept climbing and disappeared into the thickness and we all jumped a bit on the spot and hugs were shared.
The plane looked good coming down, from what I could tell, and then just as I expected the thing to float onto the tarmac, its nose dipped forward and it lurched hard to the left and completed two shattering cartwheels. It’s an image I will never be able to erase, the jumbo flipping over and over, twice, like a child’s toy, then exploding.
We watched.
There were no emergency vehicles. None of us rushed forward or backward or called for help. We sat. We watched it go. Watched them blaze away in an orange sky.
Beatrice was the first to start screaming. Fats slapped her face hard and she throttled down to an ongoing series of wrenching sobs. The rest of us were silent.