A car driving past me hoots, making me jump. Asshole. I study the photo again and try to make out the words in the logo on Eve’s shirt. Aurohine, Automin, Aoruhin, like characters in a Tolkein novel. I jab them all into my keypad but the results look like gobbledegook, or Czechoslovakian. Eventually a variation I try—Auramine—picks up some promising results. On the www it tells me that Auramine O is a fluorescent dye also known as Basic Yellow 2, but on the South African pages AuruMine is a name of a mining operation in Nigel. Gold. Au. Aurum in Latin. Gold Mine.
Half an hour later I have left civilization behind me and am heading east towards the hillbillies. There is a roadblock just outside of Jo’burg and when I see the blue lights I start to sweat. I have the urge to run my car over the centre island and start a high-speed chase on the wrong side of the highway. End my life in a blaze of glory. Instead I swallow a lot and try to look normal. I don’t want to avoid looking at them because I’m sure that’s what criminals do, nor do I want to look too directly at them. Nothing screams guilt more than looking someone straight in the eyes. I make sure that I’m wearing my safety belt. The fake driver’s license burns a hole in my wallet. The cars around me slow down to a virtual stop at the officers’ command and I can just feel that they are going to pull me over. The music on the radio is shouting at me so I turn it off. I am a few meters away from a busty policewoman who is bursting out of her uniform and has wet black marbles for eyes. She blinks at me, looks too long. She holds out her hand. She has recognised me and is going to pull me over. I look left and right for an escape route but am boxed in by cars on all sides. I think of jettisoning the car and running but I wouldn’t stand a chance with all these uniforms and walkie-talkies about. Just as I lose my hearing to the blood in my ears, the policewoman shunts her arm at the car behind me, signalling it to park. Bless you, Jesus. The breeze rushes in the window as I accelerate, away from the spinning lights. Maybe my luck is turning, after all.
Within ten minutes I am far enough away from the cops to feel hopped up. I can see how Bonnie and Clyde became addicted to being on the run. The frisson of the open road; the rushing knowledge that one has just dodged a bullet. The tinny banjo tune from Deliverance strums my brain. High-rise steel and glass gives way to crumbling concrete and bad paint jobs. Trees morph into pylons. The smell of city grit gives way to the rotten vegetable smell of abandoned fields. The land becomes flat and I drive past a glass factory and commercial cold storage. A fine dust covers the car. I eat the pasty.
When I reach what I guess is halfway, before the first toll road, I pull into a quiet service station and fill up. In the convenience store I find cheap orange razors, nail scissors, black hair dye, a Hawaiian shirt flocked with flamingos and a pair of cheap Ray-Ban knockoffs. Instead of using the public toilets I walk around the back of the building and find the staff amenities. I lock myself in and begin cutting my hair. I mix the dye and massage it in. The plastic gloves are too damn tight and they split as I am working, leaving me with black welts on my hands and mechanic’s fingernails that look like they have been slammed in the door. While the dye is in I shave off my beard, find a bottle of bleach in the supplies cupboard and try to clean my hands with it. It’s soapy and feels good, the way it stings my skin. I wash out the dye, using my T-shirt as a towel, then put all the used things back into the plastic bag and dump it. When I get to the car I take off the license plates and chuck them in the boot.
I drive through Boksburg, Brakpan, Springs and, just when I think I’m going to fall off the edge of the world (Here Be Dragons!) I see the sign, a huge green mining wheeclass="underline" Nigel Welcomes You. Not very auspicious, I agree.
I have hollow hope that there is a pleasant place to stay. I head slowly to the main road on the lookout for promises of accommodation but end up collecting hostile stares instead. The locals here don’t like strangers. Especially strangers like me prowling around in old junkers looking (I can imagine) like evangelists, molesters, or crack dealers. I pass giant peaks of fine yellow sand, mining dust melted by the rain, like wax mountains. Eventually I roll on down to what seems to be the popular part of town. There is a butcher, a bottle store and a steakhouse, with a church on every block. What more does a small town need? I will stick to the bottle store for my brand of entertainment. In general I am not anti-religion, just anti-stupidity. I drive past a shop called ‘Tombstoneland’ and it reminds me of the gravestone showroom I saw on the way to Eve’s wake, a hundred years ago. A minute ago. Am I the only one who finds this bizarre? You would think that with my preoccupation with death, I would delight in bright yellow signs on shop windows promising marked-down caskets, but I don’t. If it was my coffin then perhaps I would be interested, enough even to venture inside and run my fingers over the cheap finishes and Chinese satin but, as they stand, they remind me of what I have lost, and I drive on.
I park, remembering not to stamp on the footbrake too hard. I buy a half-jack of cheap whisky and slip it into my pocket. The sun is on its way out and the dusk leaches the colour out of the street scene. My life in black and white. The red light of the steakhouse sign flickers on; I stumble into the darkness. The restaurant is all heavy beams and brick arches and makes me think of a hobbitwarren wine cellar, complete with flagstone floor and dusty fake grapes for décor. Walls made out of bottle bottoms and huge black metal light fittings straight out of Braveheart. There is a chalkboard illustrated with exotic sounding happy-hour cocktails: cheap thrills for locals. I approach the bar over which a giant Jagermeister bottle hangs and order a pint of Windhoek draught. A coaster with an illustration of a Yorkie is put in front of me. It is number sixteen in a series of fifty. I flip though the rest of the pile of thoroughbred coasters until I find a less gay dog. Halfway through I find a Rottweiler which I purloin. A cosmo would work, or a strawberry daiquiri, but it would just feel wrong to drink a pint off a Yorkie.