Kirsten looks across at Seth, who is concentrating on navigating the narrow roads crowded with pedestrians.
‘Anything?’ asks Seth.
‘He’s looking. He’ll let us know as soon as he finds something.’
The roads are crammed with communal taxis of all different colours and states of disrepair. Reading the bumper stickers, Kirsten thinks that she should photograph them sometime and have an exhibition of taxi décor in Jozi. She thinks of all the mini-disco-balls, the hula girls, the fuzzy dice hanging on rear view mirrors she has snapped over the years. A cut-out picture of a car radio face Prestik-ed to the dash; a makeshift beverage holder made from an old plastic Castle lager beaker, held in place with an artfully manipulated coat-hanger wire; a handheld fan taped to the windscreen and wired into the cigarette lighter power source; a dog-eared picture, stuck in the sun-shield flap, of a young bride, perspiring in a synthetic fibre dress. They all tell their own stories.
People swarm around their car. Drivers steer one-handed, leaning on their hooters, heads out of their windows. There is a scuffle a few meters away from them.
‘Welcome to Gadawan Kura territory: Little Lagos,’ he says.
‘You aren’t supposed to call it Little Lagos,’ says Kirsten. ‘It’s un-PC.’
‘Fuck PC,’ says Seth. ‘It has the highest concentration of Nigerians – and hyenas – outside of Nigeria.’
‘And Malawians. And Zimbos.’
‘Those guys don’t count,’ he says, ‘too quiet.’
‘African Slum of Nations.’
‘That’s more PC. More representative. Good one.’
They haven’t moved for a while, so Seth decides to park and walk the rest of the way.
‘It’s nothing short of insane to walk around here, but if we sit in this gridlock your friend’s had it.’
Kirsten grabs the insulin kit, slings the handle over her arm and keeps it pinned to her chest as they manoeuvre their way through the throngs of people. Seth presses the button to lock the car and set the alarm, but has little hope for it to be there when they return. There are a few other white creeps around who look like locals – poor whites, thinks Kirsten – who don’t stand out as much as she does with her new apocalyptic hairstyle, and Seth’s smudged eyes and piercings. Having grown up in a virtually colour-blind society, it’s a novel feeling to be so aware of the tint of her skin; she feels the glances from everywhere. They pass an informal marketplace, a couple of stalls on the side of the road that seem to be doing a great deal of business. Airtime; doorstops of white bread; amaskopas; paraffin sold in re-purposed, scuffed plastic soda bottles; yellow boxes of Lion matches; half-jacks of cheap brandy-flavoured spirits; spotted bananas. Leathery R50 notes travel from palm to palm and change is slipped deftly into warm pockets, never counted. They weave in and out of the streams of people, Kirsten shielding her broken arm, till Seth turns into a road without a name.
They make a few more turns, passing a house in mourning with a SuperBug warning on the door. Their wailing sends streamers of powder blue out of the house and Kirsten tries to dodge them. Seth almost trips over a blind beggar with grey milk for eyes, and the stench of open sewers makes Kirsten retch in the direction of a greasy, defaced wall.
‘Almost there,’ he says, checking his Tile and grabbing her hand when she straightens up. She lets him lead her further into the jutting maze.
When they arrive at the destination it’s not at all what Seth expected. A 50s-style brick and mortar house stands defiantly among its corrugated-iron shack neighbours. Chipped steps lead up to a small burgundy veranda: sun-brittle plastic chairs and a blue front door. Cracked black windows like broken teeth in the grimy façade.
‘I expected… more of a… security system in place,’ says Kirsten, ‘taking their particular business into account.’
‘They move around a lot. I guess there’s not always time to put up an electric fence.’
They walk up the steps and are startled when something with matted brindle fur bolts straight for them, screeching, yellow fangs bared (Rotten Egg Yolk). They both jump. The animal gets to within a metre of them but is yanked back by its chain. A monkey.
‘Jesus Christ,’ says Kirsten, hand to hammering heart.
Despite the limitation of being chained to a pillar, it still tries to get at them, chattering and screaming in frustration. There is a raw patch of skin around his neck where the collar chafes; it seems there are frequent visitors to this house.
‘There’s your security system,’ says Seth.
They knock on the door. Kirsten has the urge to wash her hands and wonders if the house has running water. And if they have running water, would it be acceptable for her to ask if she could use it? She isn’t sure what kind of etiquette was expected in this kind of situation. She would smile and ask nicely, and hope to not offend protocol. There are footsteps behind the door and a masculine voice says ‘Yes?’
‘I’m looking for Abejide,’ says Seth. There is silence on the other side of the door. ‘Abejide,’ says Seth again. The door opens, but there is no light on inside, and no one says a word. They take it as a sign to enter, and as soon as they step across the threshold, the door is slammed shut behind them and they are pressed against the wall, smoke-fragrant hands over their mouths, gunmetal clicks to their heads.
YIP, YIP, YIP.
30
Johannesburg, 2021
Someone flips the light switch and the image of the room jumps out at Kirsten. Cadmium blazes around five glistening tight-muscled men; dark, oily, like sealskin. They wear layers of light dusty clothes, wildlife-fur armbands, leather trinkets, and carry the biggest automatic weapons Kirsten has ever seen. Only two of the men aim their guns at them; Kirsten guesses that two AK47s are enough.
The youngest of the five pats them down, takes Seth’s gun off him. Looks embarrassed when he finds blood on Kirsten’s jeans. She has the unreasonable urge to tell him it’s not hers, but has a hand over her mouth. He snatches the insulin kit from her hand, sniffs it, drops it on the floor. She protests and the muzzle of the gun gets pushed right into her ribs. Seth strains a little against the man holding him down. Not too much to warrant being shot, not too little to show he’s not a pushover.
‘What do we have here?’ the man says.
‘A couple of white maggots,’ another says. He pronounces it mag-GOTS.
‘You a cop?’ he asks Seth, taking his hand away in order to let him speak. The animal teeth on his leather necklace click together, sending little circles towards Kirsten. Seth laughs.
‘I think that everyone knows that cops don’t come into Little Lagos.’
The man lets out three bars of a laugh, looks around at his colleagues. They flash their teeth. The moment is short lived: as soon as he stops smiling the others do too.
‘Then who the fuckayou?’ he asks.
‘A punk,’ says one of the other men. ‘A fuckin’ punk come to make trouble for us.’ Seth can see he is the dangerous one: hopped up on something – tik? Nyaope? White Lobster? – and unable to contain his jerky movements. Not a quality you want in a man pointing a large gun at your face. Kirsten senses that he has killed a lot of people. Bloodthirsty, she thinks. She can almost smell the warm red metal on him.
The man with the tooth necklace, possibly the leader, narrows his gaze at Seth. He takes a hunting knife out of its casing on his thigh and runs it along Seth’s face, his neck, then uses it to inspect his clothing.
‘I think we should skin him,’ says the aggro one, hopping on the spot. ‘Skin him and feed him to the fuckin’ hyenas.’