How unlikely it was that any of our offspring would be able to make the spectacular leap of imagination and intellect required to understand the maths and science behind the boxes we called computers.
‘God,’ he summarised, ‘is necessary. A certain level of ongoing divine intervention is the only route to ensuring that the collective legacy of man doesn’t just dribble into the soil. You will have no success without God.
‘Without me.’
At the time I remember being repulsed by his ambition, but as I wrote, it all appeared more logical.
We had only partially succeeded in educating the children. The more progress we made, the more obvious it had become how many large gaps there were – in our approach, and in the content we were attempting to deliver to our brood. As maths progressed past times tables we – the teachers – were having to teach ourselves too much. The day was fast approaching when it would make more sense to send Roy Jnr by himself into the archives to decide what to learn, and how to go about learning it.
The chance he had created for us, mankind, Madala explained, was the opportunity to reset the pile of sand. To, this time, take advantage of the power and depth of our new foundation. To grow into a new shape and form, to put our abilities and our potential to a new, defining use.
But we needed help.
We needed God.
I allowed myself to picture our grandchildren and their grandchildren and their grandchildren in the fields, perhaps not having the most highbrow conversation in the world and perhaps not communicating with each other across vast geographic distances, but maybe, instead, lolling back, listening to their sisters shrill in the trees and watching their brothers, the buck and the elephant and the lion, go about their own daily quests. It wasn’t such a bad view. The picture, despite its painful weaknesses, held.
What, I had to ask myself, would truly be lost should we let go, should we sink back – not in panic and shock but in calmness and with love?
There were no easy answers. I pored over that single picture for months. I lifted the corners of the canvas and looked underneath, I searched deep, I made sure I took the very lines in each child’s face and broke them apart.
I found nothing other than life.
And what was so wrong with that?
My daughter loose in the grass, expectant and free, as a raw creature of the earth must be. My son wandered the veld thinking idly – not with the force and rigour of structured knowledge but with the freedom and indulgence of play; he is pleased and pleasant and calm. In enough control to be largely free from danger, free enough from danger to relax and explore and smile and fuck and eat berries and kill beasts for meat and… and… and…
Once I had put the full text of our last exchange on paper, I went back and made notes around the conversation, adding observations and details in the margins, inserting pages of footnotes and addenda, and so on. I chased down as many of his technical and scientific observations as I could. I confirmed that my molecular make-up and that of a flower shared the commonality claimed. Regardless of where I turned, his words rang true, like that big brass bell they used to use at the church up the road when I was a child.
I was structurally different. Even the twins, the most benign and accommodating of individuals, struggled with where and how to place me. Andile visited more often, came and sat with me while I drew. She let the silence run free, then sought gently.
‘It’s our turn again soon, nè, Roy?’
I broke from the rhythm of the lines. It didn’t seem possible.
‘For real?’ I said. ‘Doesn’t seem right. How old is Sihle now?’ I considered Andile properly, caught suddenly by the remarkable fact that this soft, gentle woman was the mother of my child.
‘He’s twelve, Roy.’
‘Twelve? Not possible. Last birthday was his eighth. He’s nine.’
‘Roy, look at me, sweetheart.’ I was on the horizon again, locked into the blackness. ‘Roy!’ It was a bark. A command. ‘Roy,’ Andile repeated. She leaned across and took my hand in hers, hers so soft and filled with electricity and life and potential. ‘It’s been two years, Roy, since we lost you. Two years, Roy. You’re still lost, my angel. We still can’t find you…’
Not possible. It had been a few months, four, maybe five.
Andile pulled on my arm insistently. ‘Roy, you’re our precious, but we’re terrified we’ve lost you. You’ve been sitting here for years – years, Roy – drawing these things and writing. I don’t know what you’re writing, but you must know it doesn’t make any sense to anyone but you. We’ve tried to read it, but it doesn’t even look like English. Roy, we don’t know what to do. If even you can’t find you, how can we?’ She was crying freely now, her lower lip wobbling all over the place.
‘They sent you here?’ I asked. ‘Assigned to mission Roy, eh?’
‘We need you, Roy. The kids miss you. We miss you. We need you back.’
‘The cup thing. That for real? It’s really our turn again?’
‘Ja.’ Eyes down.
‘I have been around though, nè? I mean, it’s not like I’ve been sitting on this balcony for two years, have I?’
‘Physically, yes, you’ve moved. But mentally, no. Not at all. You don’t hear us. The kids. You scare the kids. They ask but you don’t answer. You know they call you mthakathi now, Roy? And not in a good way. You’re the crazy witch. The scary one. Your eyes. You stare straight through us. We’re steering you around the most basic things. This is the first time, the very first time, you’ve had a conversation.’
‘But I do my lessons. I take my classes.’
‘Those are for you, Roy. Those are your lessons, not the kids’. They are trying to teach you. To reach you.’
I shook my head, slammed it left and right to clear it. Looked around the balcony and saw, as if for the first time, the heaps and heaps of Fabriano, thousands of sheets of the same abstract. Overflowing ashtrays, joint after joint after joint, many – most? – only half smoked.
‘And the cup thing,’ I said. ‘You’re not sure now. No one is. Right? Whether it’s a good idea or a bad one to use these twisted genes. Yes?’ I pictured them around the kitchen table, Babalwa shaking her head in that way, Gerald staring off into the dark middle distance, Fats raising the possibilities and their ramifications.
Andile kept her eyes down. Hands in lap.
‘I’ve gone mad. Have I?’
‘Not mad, Roy. Never mad. You could never be mad. But you’ve slipped a long way now, a long, long way. We can’t figure out if you’re coming back, or whether you’re just going to keep on going.’
V
CHAPTER 55
Very, very busy
The houses, the schools, the surrounds are run through with colour. And trance. Motivations. Exhortations. And a beat that never ends. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, the thump is there.
There is a canon. Created and maintained by Sthembiso, marshalled by his lieutenants, it contains the essentials: Do You Dream? Coldharbour Days. Fly to Colours. Hypnotic. Rain. Sleepwalkers. In a Green Valley. I know them well. I can predict each vocal inflection, the exact points at which we will rise, then fall, then rise again.
They bob as they walk. Boom boom boom boom bob bob bob bob. If I could walk fast enough I would surely bob as well.
The key, as far as I can tell, is that it is not dub. It is the polar opposite of dub, and Sthembiso wants it all – life, the family, the farm, the kids – not to be dub. Dub is the fear. Dub is what could swallow us.