Эндрю Миллер (ЮАР) - Dub Steps

‘Yup, see you soon.’

I gave the phone back to the nearest sprog and drifted back to my cottage, thinking about the rare occasions my father had attempted similar phone calls or interactions, about the way his sudden attempts at emotional contact would strike at me, out of the blue. Nonetheless, I felt good having at least given it a go. He will remember when I am gone.

Now there is nothing. Everything I have from here is incidental. (This bag of bones is seriously sagging. That I can tell you. That is new. I reach out with weak, flopping arms. Things fall suddenly from my fingers. My feet stub into the ground – I cannot lift them.)

I pack my disks carefully. I asked the sound kids to set up one of those old CD things, the ones that mimic the original vinyl decks. I run through the set in my head. I am nervous. I will be defying. I will be risking. It’s an invigorating feeling, risk. The knowledge of the bullet. I feel alive. Thrilled.

I can hear the trance beating out from the fields. Armand Van Helden, I think.

I intend to leave these children with something deeper. With a challenge. I am going to shake them. Open their little eyes and their tiny, shrinking hearts.

Matron fetches me. Tight, tight jeans and a small pink thing up top, she’s oozing sex. Her pupils are blazing and I wonder exactly what she’s on, and if Sthem really has as much control as he believes, but… well, it’s not my business. It hasn’t been for a long time.

Up on the decks I look over the crowd – seems like there’s more than a hundred of them, little children. My children. I dab my finger on my tongue and put it to the air and they scream, then laugh, then shake those bony little asses. Matron giggles and shakes uncontrollably next to me, loving the limelight, the moment, the honoured position up high.

I bring it in slow, mixing imperceptibly from what was. They don’t notice – they’re too far out there on that plain, but I keep bringing it until we’ve switched, we’ve moved from that terrible, relentless pace into something deeper, the dub pulse pushing, insistent.

Their bodies find it before their minds do. I watch them realise in the smallest of jumps, the tiniest of increments. Then I kill the drum and it’s just the synth, lifting and lifting, and their baby fingers go up. I see Sthembiso at the back of the tent and he isn’t liking this at all. Not at all. He’s got the laser-beam stare on me and next to him there are three, maybe four of his boys, all muscles and slit eyes, and two of them I can see, even from this distance, bulge with weapons.

He holds my eyes and leans into one of their ears and a fat neck nods and slips out the back. The kids start to whoop – I mean, really whoop – they’re still lifting, their bodies know what’s coming, their ears tuning to the rebellion. It’s going to sing. It’s going to be delicious.

And I think, Jesus, here I am, a little dying man on the decks, here I really am, doing this, and there they are, loving with eyes stronger than I can imagine, embracing a thought I can no longer conceive, the little ones heading out into the future, and for a second, just an instant, in a blue and pink flash of light, I think I see Madala in his blue overall, right at the back of the tent, behind Sthem and his boys. And then he’s gone.

But the synth is still going, lifting and lifting, and now they’re impatient, they need it. There is no meaning if it doesn’t come, now, and I lift my arm, my tired old broken arm, one last time. I push it into the air and they scream and yelp like the little children they are, and then, finally, after all these years, I drop it. I drop it, at long, long last.

First published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2015

10 Orange Street

Sunnyside

Auckland Park 2092

South Africa

+2711 628 3200

www.jacana.co.za

© Andrew Miller, 2015

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-4314-2220-3

Also available as an e-book:

d-PDF ISBN 978-1-4314-2249-4

ePUB ISBN 978-1-4314-2250-0

mobi file ISBN 978-1-4314-2251-7

Cover design by publicide

Set in Sabon 11/15pt

See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za

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