Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

My mouth is dry and swallowing is difficult. It goes against every instinct in my body to hand over a fat envelope of cash to a Nigerian. These are people who kidnap tourists, scam grannies by email and keep hyenas as pets. I hand it over.

“Thank you,” he nods, and begins to close the door. I jam my foot in.

“I need to see Mrs X!”

“There is no need for that.”

He is looking decidedly more Nigerian the longer I stand here.

“Look,” I say, giving him the most threatening face I can muster, “I need to see her. She has the information I need.”

“Mrs X has gone on holiday.”

“Holiday?” I cough.

“Aspen. She is fond of skiing.”

“But you said… the deal is on.”

“You have everything you need Mister Harris.”

I laugh.

“Beautiful. That’s just fucking beautiful. So, you wait to tell me that after I handed over the cash.”

He motions almost imperceptibly towards the inner pocket of his jacket.

I hesitate, feel mine, then pull out a letter with gold wax insignia. Sealed with an X.

“Have a pleasant evening further,” smiles the butler and closes the door.

The fountain is fizzing and the late afternoon sun lends a peculiar glitter to the birds of prey, making them look ready to pounce.

I shake my head. Aspen, for God’s sake. I picture Mrs X dangling on a ski lift, sipping Moët in a golden winter suit, making kissy noises at Dasher, poking his ear-muffed head out of her trembling handbag. As I leave the property an uneasy feeling stirs. The one I should be used to by now. The one that tells me someone is watching me.

There is a man standing by the Merc. I lift a hand to shield my eyes from the setting sun and blink at him. It is Edgar. We both freeze, then he turns and runs. Without thinking I take off and follow him. Anger propels me forward and I gain on him but I’m unfit and he is a fast fucker and after a few hundred meters, he turns a corner and is gone.

I lose my temper, dig my phone out of my jeans pocket and hurl it onto the tarred gravel.

“FU-U-U-U-U-UCK!” I scream with what little breath I have left. How the fuck? How did they know? Panting, I goose-step back to the Merc and kick the tyre.

“Fucking FUCK!” I scream. The shoes on the people around me are stuck to the pavement. Fucking tracking system on the car. Fucking smartphone GPS. I jump on it. Then I stick my hand under the car arbitrarily looking for some kind of wire I can pull out but come up with nothing but a greasy hand. I want to throttle someone; preferably Edgar. The people who are stuck to the pavement start walking again, slowly, keeping a wide berth. No wonder they don’t like strangers. It is clear that before I do anything else I have to get the tracker off the car. Only in South Africa would a clapped-out car like this be fitted with a tracking system. Fucking insurance companies, fucking criminals. The sun sinks.

Being a kind of outlaw myself, I wonder who would agree to remove the system from the car. There is a township nearby called Duduza. Call me a racist but I reckon that’s my best chance. I get in the car and before I do anything else I uncap a new bottle of whisky I don’t remember buying and have a good long sluk. I start driving and after taking the first few turns, I see the grey Datsun parked on a grass verge, behind a Privet hedge. There is a shouty laugh in my head, à la Mrs X: Ha! Haha! as I jump out and let down all four of Edgar’s tyres. As I drive away I think, well, at least I hope they were Edgar’s tyres.

It should be a ten-minute drive to the township, but without GPS it takes me half an hour and when I get there it’s dark. I see people frowning at me when I cross the boundary. Despite it being 2011 South Africans are still vaguely surprised when they see a white person in a township. Ironic, because it is quite possible it is one of the safest places one can be, because when you are so obviously out of place you are protected by your very conspicuousness. Except in Soweto, I guess, where there are so many whites nowadays I’m sure the tourists feel scammed.

Duduza, despite its name, has a brutal past. The black people who lived in Charterston were forced to ‘resettle’ here because their close proximity to the white town of Nigel made the government feel uncomfortable. The same government named it: a Zulu word, meaning comfort. I remember seeing Duduza in the news in the 80s as violence flared up – boycotts and marches – one in particular ending in what was supposedly the first mob necklacing in the country.

I drive on the sandy braille roads set between the shacks that hover on the edges, squatting on the red soil. There is the large heart of Duduza, which has tarred roads, schools, pretty gardens and streetlights, and then there is the overspill in every direction, a sprawling informal settlement. My money is on the shack dwellers for what I have come for, so I keep to the dark, smoke-choked radius, dodging drunken pedestrians and street dogs with glowing green headlights for eyes. I weave slowly ahead, hoping to see someone dodgy-looking. A young teenager with a torn shirt flags me down and I roll down my stubborn window.

“ Heita brother,” I say.

“ Dagga ?” he offers. “ Tik ?”

He is thin and his skin is ash-dry.

“I need someone to help me with my car.”

“Blow job? ” he blinks. I cough in shock, and shake my head.

“I need help with this car. I’ll give you money if you show me where to go.”

He looks worried and glances side to side. Probably thinks I’m a pervert, or a cop. But at the mention of money he opens the door anyway. Poor bastard.

As he climbs in, I can see how nervous he is. He slaps the dashboard and smiles. “Nice car!” he says. The stink of poverty fills the cramped space. His anxiety makes him animated: he motions with his hands and grunts to show me the way. We drive deeper into the darkness. I look over at him every now and then, trying to gauge how truly fucked I am. He has scars on his cheeks.

“This house,” he says, “here!”

It looks just like every other shack we have passed. There are lots of people milling around. I take a deep breath. When driving in here I thought the best possible outcome would be to do this job quickly and cheaply and then get the hell out. Now I’m hoping that I don’t get knifed. We get out of the car and I lock it, then on second thoughts I open it again and grab my bag, slinging it over my shoulder. We walk towards the house and before we go in the young man puts his hand on my chest to stop me. He motions for me to wait outside. I look around. People are glancing at me, some chuckling. The smoke in the air makes my eyes burn. I look down and try to stay out of trouble. I feel like a prat in this dinner jacket. Thank God I don’t have the Jaguar. Despite my circumstances I can’t help feeling this is an experience I’d like to write about. The feverish energy in the smoggy air, the young tattered boy. Between this and the taxi rank in downtown Jo’burg, which feels like years ago, I’ve really got some good material. I’m glad I have travelled all over the world for the sake of my writing but realise, now, I have largely ignored the dirtygritty beauty of my own country. Perhaps things do happen for a reason. Perhaps after this disaster of a year I really will have some good stuff in my pen.

The youngster comes out, trailing a handsome man behind him. He doesn’t look anything like a criminal. He walks right past me and up to the car, sizing it up.

“Hi,” I say, offering a hand. The man lifts his chin at me.

“You want to sell?” he asks.