Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

After I pay the bill I head up the narrow stairs to the hotel. There is a no one at the reception desk so I move towards ringing the bell and as I touch the metal, someone behind me speaks and I jump.

“Good God,” I say, trying to recover my composure.

It is the waiter, sans apron. He moves to behind the desk.

“Would you like a room, sir?” he asks, as if I hadn’t already told him that downstairs.

“Er,” I say, “yes, please.” I smile, as if to show him I see the humour in the situation but he doesn’t smile back, and hands me a key.

“Number 3,” he says, motioning vaguely to his left, “straight down the passage.”

He moves away from the desk, puts his apron back on and walks downstairs.

The room is a shock of bad taste, small and stuffy. There are gimcrack prints framed on the wall: kitsch paintings of an Italian landscape complete with generous fountain, some kind of snow palace I can’t place (Russia?) and, of course, the old Eiffel Tower, all splendidly mounted in chipped, gold-painted wood. I open the bathroom door and am shocked when I see a man with black hair. I run my hand through it. I can’t believe how different I look. I step closer to the spotted mirror to inspect my face. My eye sockets are no longer purple and my nose has healed with a slight bump in the bridge. The old scar on my cheek is almost invisible. I grimace and check my teeth. I can’t even tell which are mine anymore. I shake my head sadly at the shower; it’s a crude rusty rose stuck onto a pipe. The floor of cracked tile hides behind an antiseptic-green shower curtain. A shower curtain! I switch off the light before I gag. I close and bolt the main door, then walk to the opposite side of the room and slide the window upwards and open. My stomach is a cement mixer of dread and indigestion; I feel the acid in my throat. Looking out onto the dark street I wonder how long I have before the cops catch up with me. I wonder if tonight is going to be my last night of freedom and I have chosen to spend it here, in this blazing hellhole. For all I know this could be a wild goose chase. The only clue I have is a twenty-year-old photo of a child’s shirt that may or may not contain the word Aurumine. The breeze is good but my paranoia gets the better of me, so I close the window again and lock it. I lie on the bed, on top of the houndstooth bedspread, and watch the ceiling fan chop the air. I open my half-jack and drink straight from the bottle. It may be my last, but at least it’s an adventure.

Iwake up with a start. There is someone in my bed. I freeze. I feel the extra weight on the mattress; I can smell there is someone in the room. Who would be able to get in? The creepy waiter would have keys. But it isn’t him. The body is smooth and it has long hair. It is so dark that I can’t see my hand in front of my face, but I know the black glitter is Denise. I don’t understand how she found me, or how she got into the room, but I am half asleep and dreaming so I don’t think too much about it. Neither of us speaks: there is nothing to say. She is stroking me, and when she gets on top, her body comforts my core in a meditation of deep motion. She takes her time and I stay in the trance until I can’t hold on anymore. As I come I wake up and there is enough light in the room to see that I am in bed alone.

Ichew through an awful fried breakfast at the steakhouse while I plan the day. The obvious thing to do would be to go to the schools in the area and try to access Eve’s records. Her parents weren’t at her funeral, so I guess they must be dead or otherwise lost, but there may be other clues. I can’t help thinking that I am being an idiot. How will this amateur sleuthing help the insane situation I am in? Why would anything in Eve’s childhood be an answer to who is responsible for framing me? So I am an idiot, but I have no other leads. I can’t bear to go to jail, and I can’t sit around in fear and loathing. What I wouldn’t do to be in Vegas instead of this backwater town.

Without finishing my bacon I throw some cash on the table and duck out. The light is whitebright outside and, fresh out of the hobbitwarren, it takes me a while to adjust. I get into my father’s car and start cruising, my new, cheap sunglasses feeling strange on my skin. You’d expect the houses to be quaint here, but they’re squat and ugly and I feel I have gone back in time to when this country wasn’t a nice place to be. No wonder Eve and Denise hightailed it out of here and didn’t look back. I expected a gold mining town to be a bit glam, a bit bling. The way you can tell that Jo’burg was built on gold: everyone is obsessed with materialism, fast cars and diamonds. Cape Town is a lot more down-to-earth: they were given the mountain and the sea. Bald and boring Nigel looks like it was given short shrift.

I drive past church after church. At the hotel reception this morning there was a list of Nigel’s ‘attractions’ pinned to a mutilated cork board: six out of the ten were Afrikaans churches, and the rest were the Spar, the local butchery, the steakhouse and a bird sanctuary. I relax back into the seat and turn on the radio. It feels good to be in a place where no one knows me, knows I’m wanted by the police, knows I’m wanted by people who mean me harm. To these people I am just an ordinary man, driving an ordinary car, on an ordinary day. Out of the corner of my eye I see a sign that says ‘Ferryvale’. There is something distantly familiar about the name. I roll to a stop and try to think where I may have heard or seen it before. The car behind me, a grey Datsun, slows down too. I think the driver is going to offer me help or directions but instead, he picks up speed again and roars past me and out of sight, covering my car in the fine white dust that seems to suffocate everything in this place.

I start the car again and enter Ferryvale, sure there is a reason I am drawn to the name. An image shimmers in a far corner of my mind, too far for me to make out what it is. The area seems a little more upmarket than I have seen so far, but not by much. Soon I am driving past the much-lauded bird sanctuary. It looks like they have filled up old mine shafts with water and reeds and called it a sanctuary. Still, it provides a pleasant break in the hot powder that makes up the rest of the scenery. A good place to dump dead bodies. My writing hand itches.

Soon enough I drive past a school called, imaginatively, Ferryvale High. It is fenced, unsettling with razor wire. It must be first break on a school day because the place is squirming with white limbs sticking out of teal uniforms. I consider staying in the car until the bell rings but anyone who sees a man in a day-old Hawaiian shirt hovering here will surely call the police. It’s steaming. I get out of the car and am thankful for the cheap breeze on my back and neck. I walk through the front gate and over the peanut-brittle walkway, into the building. I jump as the bell rings, right next to my ear, which sends my heart dashing. I didn’t realise I was so on edge. An overweight woman peers at me, adjusts her glasses, licks her coral lips. I walk towards her. I can tell immediately that she is not married and has no close friends because she is wearing a vast turquoise blouse that can only be described as a disaster, and clearly no one has told her. I remember then that I am wearing flamingos, so I guess I am not in the best position to judge. She looks me up and down, as if she knows I am a fornicator, wear old Metallica T-shirts to bed, or both, and doesn’t approve, either. She peels her lips off her horse’s teeth in an attempt at a smile and greets me with an Afrikaans accent. I put on my best face.