Эндрю Миллер (ЮАР) - Dub Steps

The pain did numb, eventually, ratcheting down from a scream to a throb, from a throb to a pulse, from a pulse to an annoying dull ache. I sliced constantly on the guillotine that now hung from my gum, tiny, almost invisible trickles of blood forming repeatedly in the curl of my tongue.

It was weeks before Babalwa could look at me directly without her own countenance crumpling completely.

I stopped smiling.

I eliminated the smile from my life.

The very idea of smiling, gone.

Losing a back tooth is unfortunate. Losing a front tooth is life-changing. I would catch glimpses of myself in shop windows and stray mirrors and every time I was shocked; the combination of hair and tooth had created a reflection I didn’t recognise. I turned the van’s rear-view mirror far left, cutting myself out entirely. I withdrew from Babalwa, and from myself. I lay awake at night, fizzing in sobriety, frogmarching myself into dreams of magnitude. I whipped and whipped and whipped. But while the scars slowly grew closed, the damage remained.

‘Boss.’ Fats sipped his tea and blinked rapidly. ‘That’s about the most fucking tragic thing I’ve ever heard.’ He wiped back a tear. ‘Serious. Since all this shit happened, this is the most pathetic, disturbing thing…’

I shrugged, picked a tea mug off its stand, reached to turn on the kettle and then put the mug back. ‘Imagine how I feel.’

‘That’s the point, nè?’ Fats locked me in for a while, eyeball to eyeball. ‘That’s exactly the fucking point.’

‘What’s the point?’ Babalwa slurred, having appeared at the corner of the kitchen door. She was wiping her eyes.

‘Hai.’ Fats shook his head. ‘We were just discussing your mlungu here and his dental problems.’

‘You drinking tea?’ Babalwa asked Fats hopefully.

‘Ice-cold. Straight out the barrel. You want?’

‘No. Yuk’. She shivered in the doorway, hugging her elbows.

‘Where you from, anyway?’ Fats asked, managing to sound simultaneously serious and slyly suggestive of something unnamed.

‘Port Elizabeth. PE.’

‘Ah. Land of the defeated. Askies.’

‘Not so bad.’ Babalwa glared at him. ‘It wasn’t so bad.’

Fats carried on the conversation in a mix of bad isiXhosa and tsotsitaal. Babalwa replied rapidly and within seconds I was gazing around the room looking for something. I tried to hang onto the one or two familiar words, but it was useless. The conversation shifted gear several times and I felt myself become the subject, discussed rapid fire, followed by an awkward silence.

‘Sorry, Roy, my man, you know, it’s good to connect. Authentically.’ Fats drained the last of his tea and thumped the mug down into the sink without looking at me.

Babalwa backed out of the kitchen, still hugging herself.

Fats turned and beamed at me blankly. ‘Well, I must tell you, it’s fucking good to have some more faces on board. And one that I already know – I would never have thought it was possible.’

‘How long you been following us?’ I asked on a whim.

‘Tebza and I heard the shots – when you were testing your cannons. We followed the sound, tried not to get pinned by stray bullets, and here we are. Tebza was supposed to follow you from a long distance but I presume you lost him at some stage. He’s not really the following type.’

‘Where’s he now? Tebza?’

‘Not sure,’ Fats replied, three-quarters of an eye seeking Babalwa’s vanished form. ‘That will have to be our next move, before we go back. We’ll have to find him.’

‘Back where?’

‘Home, my half-toothed friend. Home.’

There were a million reasons why I had never liked Fats Bonoko and they all came flooding back as he marched through Eileen’s flat calling the shots. Firstly, he was an arrogant son of a bitch. Secondly, he was extremely skilled at putting that arrogance to work. Fats invariably emerged shining from the rubble of his business interactions. He launched the hand grenades, picked out the prizes and stepped around the corpses. Hardly a unique paradigm in our business, but extremely frustrating for the foot soldiers.

He was, to top it all, good-looking, fit, muscular and possessed of a powerful, annoying wit.

‘I’ve just remembered,’ he offered as we waited for Babalwa to gather warmer clothes. ‘That chewing gum thing you came up with. Awesome. Quality work. What was the line again?’

‘Counter revolution.’

‘Counter revolution.’ He slapped the butt of his rifle. ‘Counter revolution. Love it. It was rare, that one. Perfect timing. Fantastic.’

‘I like to think I made a contribution.’

Fats burst into a guttural laugh, slapped his rifle again. ‘Ah man, too much. So dry. You always were so dry.’

We headed out. Fats in front, leading us down the stairs. Babalwa behind him, then me.

‘There are seven of us,’ he called out as we descended the stairwell. ‘Me, Tebza, Lillian the American – don’t even fucking ask me how we ended up with an American – sis Beatrice, Gerald the mercenary and the twins – well, that’s what we call them, they’re inseparable. Thus far, just so you know, we have no agreement on what happened. Tebza has his very own ideas, which no one can understand; the rest of us are split somewhere between the apocalypse, a virus and godly intervention of some kind or another.’

Our feet thumped in unison down the last stairs.

‘Me,’ Fats continued, ‘I’m scared shitless, but I’m also glad I’m not in advertising any more. You feeling me, Mr Fotheringham?’

I grunted.

Teboho appeared as we left the building. He was a tall, sloping kid of about nineteen or twenty, one tiny white earphone dangling over his heart, the other plugged in. There was a faint scar next to his left eye, which squeezed and wrinkled when he smiled or squinted. Basketball clothes: shorts cutting off below his knees, fat white sneakers, red Nike vest. An R1 wrapped uncomfortably around his left forearm. He stepped forward and shook hands politely, repeating his name to me and Babalwa.

Teboho.

Teboho.

He turned after the greeting and led us down the block and into Jan Smuts, where their gleaming black Toyota 4x4 was parked beside an abandoned bus stop.

‘We did a big campaign for them years ago. Don’t know whether you noticed it, Fotheringham,’ Fats said, not bothering to look at me or wait for my participation, ‘but it was massive. Fell in love with these beasts then.’ He patted the Toyota’s bonnet. ‘Just can’t resist.’

We got into the car in silence.

Fats waved his thumb over the reader, started his beast and kicked it into first with relish.

‘For as long as there’s petrol, I think this is my baby.’

Teboho, front passenger, popped the dangling earphone in and stared out the window.

Babalwa took my hand and squeezed it.

Fats blitzed us over Bolton, then over the highway, and cut a series of sharp rights into the upper side of Houghton, where the mansions lined up on the ridge. He didn’t stop talking, rattling off random snippets like a tour guide, ranging from reminiscences from his ad days to broad reflections on the apocalypse and specific insights on the current practical difficulties in their community.

‘Our focus at the moment is on security – obviously – and the solar bank. That’s the big thing, for now. With enough power we can do pretty much what we want into the future with the farm and regularised production. That’s why we are where we are, on the ridge. We’re picking up wicked sun pretty much all day…’

Fats spoke in the classic manner of the project manager, the we’s and us’s flowing seamlessly into each other, pulling Babalwa and myself immediately into the centre of things. A de facto integration had already occurred. His mission was ours. Their challenges already belonged to me. I wondered what Teboho thought about it all – about Fats and his assumptions and directions. I looked for some kind of expression from him in the side mirror, but his face was completely blank. Zoned out.