Blank.
‘…and the reason I want you to know about the denouement at this young age is’ – I scraped around for a rational explanation – ‘because stories are so important in our lives. We live by stories, don’t we?’
I wound away from the subject, hoping the kids would have the energy to pick up a few educational scraps from the mess.
‘Roy?’ Roy Jnr had his hand all the way up.
‘Yes?’
‘What’s the difference between a story and a lie?’
CHAPTER 48
Fuck fuck fuck
I went back on many occasions. With the kids and by myself. I sat in that same seat and waited. Initially expectantly, then increasingly just as one of those things in life that become habit. The kids helped with the masquerade – we cleaned out much of the CSIR within six months.
‘Broe, it’s too much. You have to filter the shit. You can’t just dump every piece of plastic you find here,’ Fats said, puffed out with anxiety.
I apologised. Begged and joked a little. Masked the paranoia that someone would eventually dig into the source of my CSIR obsession.
True to my word, however, I did make a serious effort to filter. I sat for weeks dumping folders across to the library server, one by one. Most of it was junk – surprising proportions, in fact, were just office rubbish. Project reports, letters and process documents. Every now and then I stumbled onto a troop of Eeeyus. I was diligent about apportioning each one to the relevant child, the discoverer of the box. But as the weeks, and then the months, went by, the kids’ interest faded. Eventually their attention moved to other, more rewarding things.
I changed my routine. Explored new running routes. I began at the CSIR and headed out on the concrete highway, the N1. It was thrilling, running alone in this ocean. Different in every way to running down a street or through a suburb. The highway challenged me, urged me to keep going, north to Cairo. As I ran I imagined myself carrying on, never turning back. It was a satisfying thought – going face to face with my own life and death, step by yellow step.
For now, though, I made sure I returned, punishing myself by stretching the distance a little further each time until I was completing twenty-, then twenty-five-, then thirty-kilometre stretches. I had become, in my own plodding way, an athlete.
I put everything into the last leg. Everything. All the frustration of nearly a year of waiting. My general rage, always building and growing. My ambition for something better. My impatience, my complete and utter impatience with the situation. I packed them all into that final, back-breaking three-kilometre sprint.
‘Not bad, not bad.’ Madala beamed at me as I burst into view. He was waiting on the bench.
Inevitably, beneath my anger and exhaustion was excitement. Here, finally, was the denouement. My denouement. I wasn’t mad. I hadn’t imagined.
We sat silent for a good while, my shattered breathing the only sound, a steady, rasping beat. I would not, I promised myself, come off all eager. As desperate as I was to talk to him, I knew I would appear like a pigeon in heat. We were courting. Or rather, I was chasing. Whatever. The metaphors rumbled broken through my mind.
I breathed.
We sat.
My lungs calmed, while the sound of the birds grew up around us, a beautiful, complex net of trills and shrills, layers and layers of harmonies and evasive melodies.
At the end of it all. After hours and hours of words and explanations, I left, Madala calling behind me, urging me not to talk. Not now. The time… wrong. The moment… not.
Fuck fuck fuck, I chanted all the way home. I was desperate to see the family. My family. I wanted the kids around me, and Fats. I needed to see Fats. Speak to him. Watch him smile his gruff, all-knowing smile and hear him say something predictable yet profound. Javas and Andile. My children. I needed the brood. And, I needed them to know what I knew. I was going to tell them all and Madala be dammed.
My family was there. The kitchen buzzing with children and cooking, words flying like millions of small missiles through the heart of us. Nhlanhla jumped into my arms yelling my name and Motse tried to follow him, nearly sending us toppling into Beatrice’s salad. I was scolded for being late by every adult, and then by every child. ‘You couldn’t have been running for six hours, Roy,’ Babalwa chided. ‘Please tell me you weren’t running for six hours. You’re going to kill yourself.’
‘Nah, I ran for a few and then I spent the rest talking to an alien.’
English slapped Jacob’s face with a lettuce leaf. Lerato burst into tears at the shock of it and then Javas was singing. He started as an elephant and transitioned into a smooth tiger baritone, and in a few seconds he had everyone accompanying him on our favourite adaptation of an old children’s story, which came to a climax with him leading the entire troupe of kids out the back door into the evening light, like the Pied Piper, with two of them on his back and the rest singing and clapping in a row behind.
‘Eish, Roy, talking to aliens?’ Fats slapped a few steaks around to tenderise them. ‘People are going to start talking about you.’
‘Nothing wrong with aliens.’ I laughed and let go.
There would be no way to tell my story without changing everything.
And we had all been changed enough already.
CHAPTER 49
Rumpelstiltskin
So let me tell you about old age. About wisdom. Stories. Memory.
It’s bullshit.
There is only death.
The closer it comes, the louder the knock, the more you know that you were helpless all along. Really, you never knew. Even the things so certain. The hard facts. The basics.
Now you look back and there is nothing to hold. Your grip is a joke. All you have is the haze, a feeling that you were there, somewhere. But it’s far, far away, that place. You are a child once more, excited by the feeling, unable to hold the logic, blinded by the idea of memories.
So, what is true? What is story? What is my life?
All I have is what I can say, and I could say anything. I could say Flash Robinson or Rumpelstiltskin or George Bush and there is nothing you can do other than to smile and hold my hand and tell me yes, yes, Roy, Rumpelstiltskin.
Rumpelstiltskin.
Death.
Waiting for me.
So you can tour the expo and read our lives and gaze at the statue that is me, Roy Fotheringham, the one of the nine who etc., etc., blah blah, but that doesn’t mean you will ever truly know, ever truly see, this little old half-toothed man who, let’s be honest, can barely see himself. Life is not a story. Life is not if then, then that, then this. Life is lost memories, broken hearts, ideas of dreams, dreams of dreaming, losses and gains and hopes and hard-ons and rapes and babies and tears; we soak in tears.
Life is loss. The loss of everything.
Memory, of course, but worse than that, the loss of self.
Of you. Eventually, you will not be able to hold on.
It will be over.
All you will have as you leave is the idea, the thin whisper in your heart that this was real, that you were here. That the bird sang. And that it was beautiful.
Why me?
Why you?
Who are you anyway? Why are you reading this? From whence did you come and what do you hope to gain from this page?