Eventually I resorted to lazy sketches of Beatrice in her wrap on the couch.
Beatrice the sexual libertine.
Beatrice the demigoddess, all fingers reaching and eyes blazing.
The sketches of her weren’t very good either, but they stopped me thinking about the foot.
After six or seven Beatrice sketches, I stopped and forced myself to stare out over the night-time Jozi forest. I imagined small armies taking shape, armies of little people with hairy black feet in sandals, like the old Hobbit stories. I focused my ears on the sound of the bats pinging between the trees. I imagined armies of trees, as in the stories of my childhood, big trees and small trees, oaks and acorns and pines, all rising up to march, to liberate, to change.
I imagined I could hear the first rustles of rebellion, the quiet but clear barking of the leaders, the assenting murmur of the troops as the forest picked up its long-dropped hemline and marched. Marched up to me, over and through our little complex, and on, southward, to the sea, to the end.
The next day I feigned illness, tiredness, fatigue and palmed the kids off on Beatrice and Gerald for the return CSIR venture.
‘When last did you think you saw another person?’ I asked Fats in the kitchen that afternoon as we baked. It was his turn on the roster but I was helping out. Solo duty could get depressing.
‘Like, for real or just wishing?’
‘For real – an honest-to-God what-the-fuck-was-that.’
Fats lifted his dough and kneaded it high in the air, stretching it out parallel to the countertop and then pushing it back into a lump. ‘Must be a while now. Maybe a year. Thought I was being tracked around the school. Kept on seeing shadows vanishing around the corners.’
‘You chase them down?’
‘Of course,’ he chuckled. ‘Gotta try, nè? Why? You see one lately?’
‘Ja, the other day at the CSIR. Thought I saw a foot in the bush. A foot in a sandal being drawn back.’
‘Tricks of our minds. Don’t think it will ever really stop. It’s the mirage thing, like in the desert.’ He tossed the dough lump into the air and let it fall dramatically onto the counter in an explosion of flour.
We baked the flat breads – twelve in total – and chatted on, the withdrawn foot drifting slowly into the conversational past. In between thinking of the foot I had flashback visions of Fats as he was when he first found us, all puffed out and aggressive, full of red ink, maps and grand plans. Clothing crisp and calculated, words even more so. Now, he was a portly guy who baked happily and raised his kids. Only very occasionally would the project manager be let loose, and then only as a reaction to genuine emotional stress. Life with Babalwa was clearly benefiting him. I thought too, suddenly, uncomfortably, of the rape accusation. Something no one had spoken about for a long time.
Fats kept looking into the oven, protecting the first batch of flat breads as if they were meant to rise. Between checks on the bread, he scuttled from fridge to countertop with his whisk, on a mayonnaise mission.
Babalwa arrived and hugged her man from behind.
‘Roy saw a foot,’ Fats told her. ‘At the CSIR.’
Babalwa peered at me with the halves of her eyes that could get over his shoulder. ‘Just a foot?’
‘Just a foot,’ I said. ‘I didn’t stop. Had kids with me.’
‘What kind of foot?’
‘A black foot.’
‘Like black as in the colour black, or black as in the foot of a black man?’
‘Like the foot of a black man. Well, the foot of a non-white man. Ha ha.’
‘We should go back and check it out. You never know.’ Babalwa remained latched onto Fats’s back, her cheek buried against his shoulder blade as if she was trying to nap.
‘Nah,’ Fats said. He shook her off and trotted back to the oven. ‘I really don’t think it could be anything. There’s no way anyone would be hiding at the CSIR. Maybe lost at the CSIR, but not hiding. They would have jumped straight out.’
‘Still…’
Fats removed his first breads, swearing at the burns on his hand. ‘You should use the cows, baby,’ Babalwa chided him, referring to the cow oven gloves.
‘Real men don’t use cows,’ he said, loading up the second round.
She slapped a hand at him, but missed. ‘You should check it out again, Roy, just in case,’ she said as she headed out the door. ‘Will someone holler when there’s food?’
So I went back.
There was nothing to see. No feet and no people, just a quiet, recently hacked forest and some buildings that used to house important things. I picked out my favourite bench, in the middle of the thick park area to the right of the complex entrance. I had cleared the path to the bench purposefully, and now I spent a good deal of time, a few mornings in a row in fact, sitting on my seat, nibbling on flat bread or strips of biltong. I was, truth be told, beginning to enjoy the CSIR forest. It had that stark, echoing atmosphere of the Lowveld about it. A silence filled with movement. The rub of insects against trees. Birds flapping. Suggestions of song bubbling out into the air, then sinking back again. It was bush quiet. It felt like camping.
The others questioned me when I returned home after the first few visits, and then let the subject go.
We had all had our moments, and we all chased them in our own private ways. After day three there was a polite, accommodating absence of interest.
I kept going back, though, not so much to look for the foot, but to rest. To be alone with myself and to consider the air as I breathed it in and out. To empty my mind and my heart. To exhale.
Eventually, he came shuffling down the hill from the general direction of the nanotech centre.
An elderly black man in a blue overall.
A caretaker.
The caretaker.
He drifted all the way down with his head slightly bowed. I waited for him, and when he got close and made to sit next to me, I said, ‘Sawubona, Madala’ – the only thing I could think of.
‘Madala. I like that,’ he said, lowering himself carefully onto the bench next to me. ‘Sawubona, indoda.’ As he gave this formal reply, he dipped his head to support the greeting, as if he was Japanese, or from deep Limpopo. ‘It is a beautiful day, is it not?’ He spoke ever so slowly. His accent was neutral. His blue overall was new and clean. There were no stains or marks on it at all.
CHAPTER 47
A story and a lie
I introduced myself. He brushed my efforts off, amused by the fact that my name was Roy. When I asked for his, he said, ‘Madala. Just call me Madala.’
‘Really? Madala is your actual name? That’s pretty unusual, nè? Where you from?’
‘Oh, around here,’ he glanced around.
‘Pitoli?’
‘Ja, sho.’ He mimicked me, picking up my crassly formed white-boy tsotsitaal inflections and sending them right back.
I let it lie.
The encounters I had had with survivors thus far involved a base, guttural kind of coming together. Hugs and back slaps. Tears and laughter. Kisses. Amazement. Energy. I thought most of all of the way Babalwa and I had met – the sheer force of our troublesome fuck. But none of that here. Madala wasn’t exuding anything beyond the appearance of perpetual yet partial amusement.
I scuffed the dirt with my toe. ‘It’s a beautiful place, this. You been coming here often?’
‘Indeed. Lovely.’ He exhaled with evident satisfaction. ‘So full of life. A wonderful mix of life forms actually. That’s what I like most about it.’