‘Who do you love?’ I asked without thinking.
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, where do you go when your heart is hurting, or worried, or fearful? Is there anyone who makes you feel safe – emotionally safe?’
Her eyes twitched, flicked. She peered at me as if for the first time. ‘Love? Like in books? Movies?’
‘As in the twins. Andile and Javas. For example. They loved each other.’
‘Nay. Neva. They say it’s myth. Like democracy. Mebbe ut work, by accident, but not really true. Summint that explain sex and fucking, which we don need to know now.’
‘Well, it might be something to explore. Love. As far as I ever knew it was quite distinct from sex. Involved in sex, maybe, but by no means definitely. When faced with real confusion, it can help to speak to someone who knows your heart.’
‘Who you love?’
‘Me? Well I struggled a bit in that way. Later, like now, now that I am where I am, I look back and I can see who I loved. At the time I wasn’t able, though. I just lived with it. The confusion. It became part of me. Not necessarily a great thing.’
‘An now? When you look back?’
‘I loved them all, of course. It’s easy to say that now. When you’re old you love easily. But now… well, Babalwa, of course. But Beatrice too. English. And Sthembiso. Always Sthembiso…’
‘Really? Sthembiso?’ Her eyes were widening, alert, worried. ‘But he keep you here. Locked—’
‘Locked up? No, my child. I mean, yes. Of course. He keeps me here. He has his reasons; he needs certain things from me. Fears other things, maybe. But the locking up? That was me. I put myself right here, long before he had any power or ideas or anything of the sort. I am my own jailer. Always have been.’
Matron cried. The clipboard fell half out of her hand before she caught it and then put it back against her hip. Then she faced me again, tears running. I reached out, took the clipboard and put it on the bed. Then I pulled her into my old musty chest and hugged the girl.
She sobbed into me – sobs of the young. Sobs of the innocent. I rubbed her back and cooed and clucked into her sweet-smelling afro. After a long time she pushed me away, slowly, and looked up into my craggy old lines. ‘An you, tata? Wot bout you?’
‘Of course, dear,’ I replied. ‘Me, I am full of love. For you most of all. Sadly, though, I don’t think I’m a long-term option.’
‘No, Roy!’ Matron grabbed her clipboard off the bed and pulled it to her chest. ‘You don say that. You not allowed.’
‘Yes, ma’am!’ I laughed, took her hand and tried one last time. ‘Seriously, though, you need to think about it. Your heart. Don’t let it overflow. If you’re feeling things, you need to share those feelings, discuss them, express them. Don’t make my mistake. Don’t think you don’t need love.’
‘Ag tata, I tink I just need a good fuck.’ She said it without a trace of humour, or irony, or anything. The words struck like iron.
Then she led me to the bathroom, where we discussed the slipperiness of the tiles.
CHAPTER 59
Of course they follow
Heaven Sent (Instrumental Mix).
Like all Markus Schulz tracks, it builds very slowly and you always know exactly where it’s going. There will be no surprises.
Steady percussion layers on the intro, then the thwump thwump thwump of the drum, then the bass lines and symbols and hand claps and the train has left the station. The lilting melody layers drift in and out, dream-like, of course. This is when those Finnish girls and boys, those Nordic ravers, those German party people, would have pushed their shiny white fingers to the sky. Then the drum and the bass line drop out suddenly and it’s all spacey, we are quiet now, empty, almost. The melody slips back in, centre stage, supported by a flutter or a whistle or some such happy beeping, up to the stars, resting now on aural cushions and clouds. The kids stand, shuffling, grinning insanely, inanely, hugging, waiting, waiting, waiting…
And bang.
They’re off.
I am amazed, shocked, that this is the soundtrack to the end of my days. That these sounds, the back track to my father’s last pathetic years, to my teenage angst and annoyance, are now the sound of authority. Of power and meaning. Of life as it will go on without me.
Trance.
And I started it.
Sthembiso’s love affair with my music collection, which was really my father’s, never ended. It was always Markus Schulz who captured him. Even as he left his teenage years behind, as he dropped all the childlike things of his past, he never let go of the candy floss, of the lure of the flock of beeps.
It is, ultimately, a blessed sound, I tell myself. A sound I should welcome. It is sometimes, in fact, the sound of life itself. Of creativity. Of music. No matter how hard it is to sleep, I must – I repeat like a Buddhist mantra – remember what it was like when there was nothing. When there were only the chirps of my brothers in the trees, only the jagged barking of insects crossing and uncrossing their legs.
I creep sometimes to the edge of it, just to see. To observe. To experience.
It is erotic, of course. Titillating. The sight of those bodies and blushed, flushed faces. The red lips and the tight tops. The tiny thin hips and the arms and hands and wrists and thighs all intertwined. The thumping heads and thumping drum.
But it is hard too, this thing. Those jaws, they grind. Always grind. Those eyes, many are beginning to reflect rather than absorb, shining like metal or plastic caught in the light. They have a lab now. (Who are they, exactly? I don’t know. When I say ‘they’, I refer, in my own mind, to the decision-making and operational unit. I refer to Sthembiso. He of the ideas. He of the action.) I saw them once ferrying scientific-looking boxes into it. Test tubes and some liquid. What do they make in the lab? It could be anything. It’s probably everything. Some of it is hard. Trance hard. Dance hard. All-night hard.
I think of my father. His narcotic grin and those insensible, inane, supercharged Monday-morning eyes. After so much change, so much difference, we’ve ended up, he and I, in the same place.
Well, almost. There are differences, of course. Babies are everywhere. Parenthood and partyhood have merged. Mothers cradle children while they dance, fondle boyfriends and feed, push prams, dance some more. We were also always at least partially dressed. These people, my children, are often almost completely naked.
Who are the parents? Who are the kids? Who is in control? Who sets the rules and who is forced to toe the line? Sthembiso is at the head of it, but other than that it’s impossible to tell. From the long distance of my age all I see is a swarming, pulsating mass of hyper-sexualised children.
We’re into the fourth generation now and I haven’t yet seen any of the signs of inbreeding. Thus, at some basic level our attempt to secure genetic diversity seems to have worked. But, to be honest, I can’t see how our small pool has created this many of them over such a short period of time. Whenever I try to add them up (I count the heads, quietly, some days) I come out with a number that exceeds the realms of possibility. There are simply too many.
I am forced, as a result, to think of Madala.
In my rare, fully rational moments I see that my children are not what I am.
I reach out. I try to touch them. But I fail. I don’t have the language. I don’t have the proximity. My fingers slide off a metallic, alien surface.