S. Naudé - The Alphabet of Birds

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, madam. We’re here to investigate the theft of a dog.’

She frowns. ‘Are you kidding me?’

‘We take the theft of animals seriously, madam. We have major problems with cattle theft.’

‘We’re not talking about cattle.’

‘Big or small, crime is crime. What would become of the world if we started measuring stolen goods?’

The policeman looks up the hill. Here and there, where the grass has been flattened by snow, Mixie pops into sight. She is running down to them.

‘We’ve had a complaint from beyond the border. And a hint that the suspects had fled to a remote place.’

‘You’re not serious.’

Ondien looks from one policeman to the other in disbelief, to Hendrik and back again. Hendrik is not saying a word.

‘A crime has been committed here, yes, but it has nothing to do with a dog.’

‘No?’ The wiry man lifts an eyebrow. ‘Why, then, do we seem to have the evidence right here?’

He steps forward, intercepts Mixie when she enters the clearing between them. A trickle of urine runs down his forearm, dripping off his elbow. The policeman with the sad shoulders makes a note in a dirty pad.

Ondien shakes her head. ‘A misunderstanding, an absurd misunderstanding. One phone call will clear it all up.’

‘No phone,’ says Hendrik.

‘No need to take statements,’ the wiry policeman says, as if someone had offered. He nods his head slowly, authoritatively. ‘We can see what’s going on here.’ He turns to Ondien. ‘You’re the responsible one?’

She is too dumbfounded to respond. She is waiting for something to happen, for Hendrik to come and chase them off with one of his tanks, or with his Nazi Beetle. He is, after all, one of her own. The only one here of her kind. Between him and the Zulu women, only Ondien and the police vehicle stand. Neither Nungi nor Beauty says a word.

Ondien is rocking back and forth in the back seat. She should probably be grateful that they have not handcuffed her. Occasionally she turns around. Mixie is standing up against the back window and whining soundlessly. The policemen did not want her to keep the dog with her. As they reach the foothills, her phone finds a signal. She makes a call.

‘Mrs Nyathi! I’m so relieved to hear your voice. There’s a big misunderstanding. I’ve been arrested. About your dog! You have to clear it all up, right now—’

‘Ooh, it’s all out of my hands now, dear, I can’t meddle in police affairs—’

‘You don’t understand. You brought the charge, after all. We’re bringing the dog back, Mrs Nyathi! I have to go and fetch the girls, Beauty and Nungi. They’re not safe. Tomorrow we have to be at Twilight Lodge—’

‘Listen, that place has burnt down. The party’s been cancelled. Rumour is that my former lodger set the place alight. Shortly before she died—’

‘Enough,’ says the one policeman, ‘stop talking.’

‘We’ll take your phone,’ says the other. The signal is lost.

The road is rough. Ondien rubs the scar on her upper arm. They drive over passes, they become trapped behind lowing cattle. It is further than Ondien remembers. She looks at the dull rocks outside, hears Mixie’s nails as she tries to gain a grip against the steel. She suddenly thinks of her sister Vera who now probably lives in a Middle Eastern desert, finally and mercifully stripped of all context. She thinks of her brother Cornelius, sitting in a conference room at a glass table — it could be any city, any time zone — hands calmly folded, eyes focused, but always on two points: here and in the distance. She thinks of her younger sister Zelda, not of her exhaustion or her Satan’s child, but of a time when they were children. The two of them on their bicycles, side by side on a two-track road, hair streaming backwards. The landscape is empty, as if there is no one else on earth. The sun is shining brightly, their feet hanging free beside the pedals. To one side of the road, neatly dug, is her mother’s bed of nasturtiums.

She sits forward. She looks at the wiry policeman, then at the one with the sad shoulders.

‘Could you sing something for me?’ she asks. ‘Something from here.’

They don’t answer.

‘Could I sing something for you, then?’

Mrs Nyathi lifts Mixie in front of her, inspecting her from different angles, as if confirming that she got back exactly what she lost. Once she is sure, she loses interest. She bends down, lets Mixie go, as if setting a wild animal free. Mixie disappears around the corner of the house.

The two Lesotho policemen looked disappointed when they arrived at the police station and it became clear that Mrs Nyathi had withdrawn the charge. They were reluctant to let go of their prize catch. Ondien’s urgent pleas to go and pick up the other two women in the mountains fell on deaf ears. She was deported without ceremony.

Ondien calls the Lesotho police’s Maseru headquarters from Bella Gardens. She reports Beauty and Nungi as missing.

‘How do you know they want to be found? Who are you? What is your relationship to the missing women?’

She hesitates before answering the last question. ‘They are like sisters to me,’ she says.

She wants to explain how they are the fuel for her metamorphoses, that they enable her to slip through boundaries. And through herself.

‘Without them, I am stuck in my own skull, like in a cage.’

‘Huh?’

She tells of her own arrest, but just manages to confuse the man further. She describes Hendrik, as well as the two policemen. They would know where Beauty and Nungi are.

‘What are the policemen’s names?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘The one is wiry, the other has sad shoulders.’

‘Who are you? Who put you in a cage? Are you a relative of the abducted women?’ He is at the end of his tether.

‘They’ve not been abducted—’

‘So, why are you wasting our time? Talk to the South African police. You’re not even a citizen of Lesotho.’

The boat leaves shore. This a party without guests. Or without the desired guests. After Twilight Lodge had been destroyed in the fire, the soccer teams’ visit was cancelled. So too was the visit of the VIPs, the political and industrial elite, who are now seeking out the centre of events elsewhere. This party is the only one still going ahead, a remnant of thwarted big plans. A boat ride on the Gariep dam, a subdued affair. The guests consist of a small circle of local important types. Municipal officials: a mayor, a heavy woman who is apparently a director of health. A provincial MEC or two. A few white farmers who just about manage to remain in favour with the local black hierarchies are tolerated on the margins. Tables are loaded with food for absent guests. Flies are circling the buffet.

The boat is luxurious and heavy, as if carved from ebony. In the cabin, the carpets are dark, with a medieval heraldic design. The furniture is shiny and varnished. Chandeliers are swaying slowly from the ceiling. Ondien escapes the stuffy cabin, walking out onto the deck. Dead heat hangs above the grey water. The smell of minerals rises from the surface. At the top end of the lake, a concrete wall reaches up like a cliff. The landscape around the lake is barren, as if nothing could live there.

Ondien has to face the heat inside to sing. The listlessness penetrates to the core of her sweaty, uncertain performance. Her voice is thin.

Like an insect drunk with light and sun, she fluctuates, hovering just below or just above the note. The excessive courage, the sense that anything is possible, that she could appropriate anything — that has gone.

The last note is still in the air when her phone starts ringing. It is Mrs Nyathi.