I look at the crouching car in my rear-view mirror and put my foot down.
The address is in the suburb of Sub-Nigel, which makes me think there is a whole parallel-universe version of this town: deeper, darker, stickier. Sub-Nigel. Sub-human. Creatures which have chosen to inhabit the other side of the tracks and perhaps only come out at night. I drive past houses with pre-cast front walls that wouldn’t keep anyone out, some shaped like picket fences, some like mining wheels and painted pink or aquamarine. Houses with their fronts falling off, watermarks on their walls like muddy waterfalls, rusted steel roofs and peeling concrete planters holding on to their long-ago perished plants. Sunsleeping dogs, broken down playsets and feral-looking barefoot kids who stop playing to look at me as I cruise past.
I use the GPS on my phone to find my way. When I arrive at the address I see the house I have been looking for since I arrived. It is the size of a mansion and looks like it was designed and decorated by someone whose wealth is indirectly proportional to his or her good taste. On top of the high walls, on watch and ready to swoop, are statues of eagles, painted gold. The walls themselves are embellished with every pre-cast detail you can imagine, and then some. There are concrete ties and bows and bowls of grapes. I ring the bell and as the giant black gates swing open I see a water feature on the front lawn the size of the Trevi fountain. I can’t help smiling.
A tall black gentleman with high cheekbones walks out to greet me. I stick out my hand.
“Mister X, I presume?”
The man smirks and leads me inside. It turns out he’s the butler. He purses his lips at the shirt I’m wearing, then hands me a jacket off the coat rail. It’s the right size. The interior décor is as deliciously hideous as the exterior. Italian renaissance meets Parisian whorehouse. The walls are covered top-to-bottom in maroon brocade damask wallpaper. The pattern is broken up only by the over-lit Roman statues and mirrors framed in golden waves. If Francina ever won the Lotto this is how she would decorate her house. The butler (A butler, really? In Sub-Nigel? I couldn’t believe my luck) escorts me down a long passage. I try to walk slowly so that I can peek into the adjoining rooms but he will have none of it and I have to hurry to keep up with him. I have the distinct feeling that I am a hare hurrying down the rabbit hole. There are paintings of toy dogs on the wall and the carpet pile is so lush it seems as though I’m tripping. Eventually the dark passage brightens and the butler disappears. I pick up my pace and get to the spot where I saw him last: there is a velvet-curtained entrance to a drawing room. I duck inside.
“Mister Harris,” booms the voice that is Mrs X.
“How did you know my name?” I ask.
“She knows… everything,” purrs a small man to my left whom I hadn’t noticed.
“I prefer not to reveal my sources,” she booms, “I’m sure you understand.”
The butler motions to a chair with his white glove and I nod at him and sit.
I look around the room, as it glitters and glints and shines at me. Mrs X adjusts her feather boa.
“Why have you requested an audience with me?” she asks, showing me her little teeth. It occurs to me that she thinks she is the queen. The queen of Sub-Nigel is, after all, still a queen.
“I need information,” I say. The little man nods furiously. The Pomeranian next to my chair yaps at me. Was he there before? He looks like a Chihuahua fresh out of a tumble dryer.
“I need to know about a family that lived around here twenty years ago. The Shaws. The father was the mine manager at…”
“Yes, Mister Harris,” she says, “the Shaw family.”
The dog yaps.
“He comes from royal blood,” she breathes.
“Mister Shaw?” I say.
“Ha!” she laughs. “Ha! Ha!”
The little man laughs. “Ha! Ha!”
She puts a taloned hand on the shimmering lamé of her jelly breasts, then fondles her pearl necklace. She dresses the way she decorates.
“Dasher.” She says.
“Sorry?”
“Dasher, the dog.”
“Ah.”
I look down at the dog.
“What do you want to know about the Shaw family, Mister Harris?”
I sit forward on my chair.
“I want to know what happened to them. Why they disappeared.”
“No one disappears,” she says, taking a drag of a cigarette I never saw her light. “They always go somewhere.”
“I’d like to know what happened to them and where they went.”
Dasher barks and we stare at each other.
“That, Mister Harris, is a seedy story of which I desire to reveal no part. Ask me something else. Like who will assassinate Obama, or what you had this morning for the breakfast you couldn’t finish.”
“I need to know about the Shaws. Someone is trying to kill me.”
“Yes,” she sighs, “I saw The Mark.”
Oh God, here comes the mumbo jumbo. She wants me to ask what mark. There is an uncomfortable silence.
“What mark?” shouts the little man.
She’s going to say: The Mark of Death.
“The Mark of Death,” she says, and Dasher begins to growl.
38
PIGEON
This is a David Lynch movie and I have stepped right into it. All I am missing is a giant and a midget who talks backwards. I decide to play along.
“I know I am marked,” I say, “and I need to find who is behind it.”
The butler arrives with a tray of Piña Coladas and cashew nuts.
“She has passed,” Mrs. X hisses. “The Shaw girl.”
“Yes,” I say. Mr X throws his drink back and I follow suit.
She strokes her chin.
“I am a good Christian woman, Mister Harris, and I don’t partake in gossip mongering.”
“How much?” I sigh.
“Five thousand, for starters,” she sighs, “I usually charge more but I know you don’t have it.”
“Five THOUSAND?” I splutter. “Rand?”
“For starters.”
“For a shred of information that may or not help me?”
“It will help you,” she says.
“It’s extortion.”
“I prefer the word ‘donation’. Do you think,” she says wildly gesticulating, “that this lifestyle comes cheap?”
She looks around, as if for something to eat. I look at Mr X who is scrunching up his eyes and upper lip in a smile. The butler reappears with a tray of dirty Martinis and a bowl of pretzels.
“Okay,” I say, “I don’t have it on me. Can I come back later?”
“Come for dinner. Entrées will be served at five. We’re having pigeon.”
Dasher pants and paws his pillow.
“Dasher likes pigeon,” twinkles Mr X.
The butler shows me out. I start to shake off the jacket but he insists I keep it, saying it’s mine.
I attempt to race to the hotel to get the money, but Sub-Nigel will have none of it. There seems to be some kind of signal interference and the map on my phone confounds me further. Despite taking different turns I end up going past the same pylon again and again. The road names are like something out of Alice in Wonderland: Right Way; Left Avenue; This Way; Ring Road; Wrong Boulevard. I haven’t felt this frustrated behind a wheel since I ‘borrowed’ Dad’s car when I was fourteen and then couldn’t find my way home. I’m in the same car now. Karma is a bloody bastard. I look at my watch: it’s already 16:45. My reflection in the rear view mirror is shiny. Eventually I see a road that looks different and I take it. It is windy and seems to go in circles but soon I see houses I remember from the journey in.
“Bless you, Jesus,” I mutter, not without sincerity.
I screech to a halt outside the hotel and run up the stairs. The envelope is where I left it, wrapped in a plastic packet and stuck to the underside of the cistern lid. It’s an old cliché but seems marginally safer than under the bed. I empty my wallet out on the dresser – the money my father gave me – and count out the notes with shaking hands. All together it comes to five thousand, four hundred Rand. I put the four hundred back into my wallet. If I pay Mrs X what she wants I won’t have enough to pay for this room or for petrol for the trip home. I imagine being marooned in Sub-Nigel for the rest of my life. Then I imagine being dead, and shove the envelope into my jacket pocket. I throw my toiletries into my bag, stealing the mean bar of complimentary hand soap in the process and giving the shower one last glance of malcontent before slamming the door behind me. I leave the door key at the empty reception desk. In seconds I am outside and I throw my bag in the car, then jump in.