Эндрю Миллер (ЮАР) - Dub Steps

I had, I now realised, neglected to bring any cleaning materials from the Cottons.

I wondered where Babalwa was.

I waited most of the morning for Babalwa’s return, dawdling around the front entrance of 1B, but there was no sign of her. Eventually I drove all the way back to the Cottons’ house, emptied out their cleaning cupboard, and then went back and scrubbed my new flat. Or at least the important parts of it. I would not, I suspected, be entertaining vast crowds.

The rooms were mostly empty. One had what looked like the remnants of a mattress on the floor, an overflowing ashtray, and a litter of broken and abandoned quart bottles. What passed for the lounge was really just a collection of beer crates, bits of wood and other odd seating devices on top of a morphing, interlocking spread of floor stains. I threw all the shit as far down Donkin Hill as I could, then went back to deal with the toilet, which I treated initially by hurling three buckets of Babalwa’s collected water over everything in the place, and then attacking it with Handy Andy and rags until it looked like somewhere I might be able to shit.

She returned a day later, by which point I had been back to the Cottons’ place too many times to count. Towels. The family book collection. A pillow. Another pillow. Another swimming-pool bath.

‘Nice,’ she said, using her big toe to mark areas still needing attention as she walked through my renovated digs. A mouldy corner of the bathroom. A light tickle against the grime on the bottom row of the stack of bean and tuna cans. ‘Not bad. Like a home, nè?’

‘So where you been?’ I trailed expectantly behind her.

‘Ah, I went home for a bit, you know, just… just to see. I dunno. Had some thinking to do. You know…’

‘We haven’t talked about it yet. I mean, we need to. I need to. I need to find out what you know. Jesus. I need to tell you what I know.’

‘Sho.’ She opened the door to the spare bedroom, then closed it again. ‘Limiting your range. Fair enough.’

‘So, fine. Can you tell me what happened? What happened to you? Or should I tell you what happened to me first? Maybe that’s better. Me, I was going through a bit of a life crisis that involved a serious need to sleep, which I did for a few days, and then I woke up and—’

‘Everyone was gone.’

‘Ja. All gone.’

‘Did you dream?’ In the kitchen now, Babalwa turned to face me, arms folded. ‘I dreamed.’

‘No – nothing. But, I mean, I wasn’t really in a condition to dream. Or maybe I dreamed and didn’t remember anything. Totally possible. One thousand per cent possible. In fact, very likely. What do you mean, dream?’

‘Let’s go to church.’ Babalwa marched out the front door.

I followed her over the crest of our hill to the Hill Presbyterian Church, an 1800s classic, replete with huge spire and broken front door.

‘Took me days to get this open,’ Babalwa said as she pushed the oak door gently forward. ‘Beat the lock with a hammer. Tiny thing. Took forever.’

We headed into the interior carefully, respectfully. Babalwa lead us to a front pew, where we sat in full view of a struggling Jesus.

‘I don’t know why. It makes me peaceful, this place,’ she said softly, still not looking at me. ‘Silly, I know. But—’

‘Christ, there’s no silliness left any more,’ I offered.

‘Sho. Sho.’ She folded her hands into her lap, priest-like, and looked me in the eye. ‘I was really tired that night. You know, beaten. It was a Thursday; I remember being rude to my mother and going to bed early. I was in that way, you know. Just kind of hating everything, but I couldn’t sleep either. I remember lying there and looking at the ceiling and questioning whether this was it. You know?’ Her eyes darted between me and her lap. I nodded encouragingly. ‘Anyway, do you know what lucid dreaming is? Ever had a lucid dream?’

‘Babalwa, I was a bad drunk. To be really honest about it, I can’t remember dreaming at all, ever. I passed out every night for over twenty years, so… no. Until it happened, nothing. After that, of course, I’ve been dreaming like a wild man. All over the place. But I can’t say any of them were lucid. The normal stuff, hard to keep a handle on when you wake up.’

‘I’ve heard the term before,’ Babalwa said, ‘so I’ve been wondering since I had the dream if that was what it was. A lucid dream. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep so I just let myself drift, wallowing in being awake, or half awake, or drifting. Whatever.’ She looked up at Jesus, then back down at her lap. ‘So at some stage I’m definitely not awake any more, I can’t be, but I don’t feel like I’m dreaming either. I’m alert. Even now, when I think back I can remember the small details, which is strange, because who can ever remember the details of a dream?

‘Anyway, in the dream I was sitting in a wooden chair. I remember the chair especially well, ’cause it felt out of context. Wrong. Then this face appears. Oprah. Not old Oprah. Young Oprah. Her voice was really warm. Gentle. Like it actually took hold of me a bit, like in my stomach – it gripped me. Anyway, ah fuck, I should just say it. She told me it was up to me now. That the key was love, not hate. That there are reasons for everything. Even the smallest things. Like a bird sitting in the tree. He’s there for a reason. She told me that, and not to panic. That I need to think of the family and grow it. Shit, it sounds stupid now, but it was so real, so vivid. When I woke up in the morning, I took ages to get out of bed, just remembering it. The texture of it. Her words. How warm she was.’

‘And when you got up?’

‘Gone. Everything. Everybody.’

‘People, and pets,’ I said. ‘And livestock. I’ve seen a few dogs around, a couple free pigs, a wild cow, but other than that, nothing. Farms are empty. And it must have been at night, ’cause everything is locked up at night. Like the car park at the beach.’

‘I know.’ Babalwa looked up at Jesus, back at me, then Jesus again. ‘The dream, Roy, it was too much. Too real. It must have been something else. It must have been…’

I left the church.

Jesus was freaking me out.

I strolled back over to the pyramid and lighthouse; odd, incongruous structures. The pyramid especially, with a neat bench attached to the front of its skirt, welcoming sea-view visitors. I found a plaque on the reverse side, which read:

To the memory of one of the most perfect of human beings who has given her name to the Town below.

I sat on Elizabeth’s bench and stared out, over the skatepark and educational graffiti walls, at the sea.

I tried to woo her.

In writing it sounds different – teenage and constructed. But at the time it was real, the attempt wrapped around the weird fact of the two of us. Around the days we spent together, or near each other, circling from a middle distance. So call it love. Call it what you will, at the time and in those moments there was a pull towards her.

Why would I resist?

And what is to ‘woo’, anyway? It, the word, has all the hallmarks of a plan, a trap. But really it was the typical flutterings of a human heart. I saw her see me, and in the process I began to see myself, feel myself, become aware again of my feet on the ground; my grey, flying hair.

Or, put another way, my chest began to swell. So I pushed it forward. One does these things. One doesn’t always know why.

Often, one turns to jazz.

I had this idea. A vision, really. A dream.

Babalwa’s in the kitchen, stirring something light and non-taxing. She’s wearing a summer dress. It’s blue and a little bit yellow and every now and again it puffs out with the wind and you know there’s another form in there, a presence, waiting. Me, also in the kitchen, chopping and guiding, the master planner. Bill Evans or Moses Molelekwa is playing and there is wine in our glasses – metaphorically in my case (I’m sipping Appletiser maybe; regardless, the bubbles dance like champagne). The sun is thinking of setting, there’s that rich orange lightness in the air. She’s a little tipsy, but only a little (OK, maybe I’ve smoked the tiniest bit of something, just for mood’s sake). The air is rich with the smell of onions frying. It’s that smell as they hit the pan, the fizz and that first rush of it, then of the garlic and the simmer. The piano carries us and she looks over, just a functional glance really, maybe she’s checking where the pepper is, and she catches a sideways slip of me and she smiles, instinctively.