S. Naudé - The Alphabet of Birds

‘The dreamlessness,’ she asks, ‘has it passed? And the messengers of Infinity — do they now visit you freely?’

He smiles wryly.

‘There was unexpectedly another level, level V. The Pharmacist, now a skeleton, is waiting with a bottle in his hand marked X . For effect I can probably thrust a scythe in his hand too … No, it’s all over, Ondien, the project. I’m struggling. Mood swings, depression, paranoia. Everything black. Our Calvinism teaches us, of course, that joy never comes without pain. Or ecstasy without major pain. My bank’s going to fire me. I’m simply not functioning any longer, I’m fucking up my transactions, one after the other.’

They remain silent for a long time. The lava lamps bubble imperturbably, hypnotically.

She looks at him. ‘Tell me, were you at our mother’s funeral?’

He quickly looks down, shakes his head.

‘Me neither,’ she says, and looks down too.

After a while: ‘Why me, Cornelius? Why did you make me come here?’

‘I was scared,’ he says, and his eyes startle her again. ‘So scared. Of everyone, you’re most like her. Like our mother.’

He leans towards her, as if he is going to rest his head on her lap. She lifts her hand towards his temple.

Notes in her head, more insistent than before, right under the skull. Flutes, then silence. Something waiting, fingers stirring behind a sheet. It bursts through. Tone clusters as black as coal.

A funeral march, that is what is building up.

Upon returning late the next evening, after a day’s meetings in Stockholm, he sits down next to her on the sofa. He leans his head back, eyes closed.

‘What are you reading?’ he asks.

She closes the book to show him. He does not open his eyes.

‘Louis Wolfson,’ she says, ‘ Le Schizo et les langues .’

‘Yes? Who’s Wolfson?’

An automatic response, just to keep the conversation going. ‘An American who wrote in French in the seventies about his schizophrenia, and his dogged project to forget his mother tongue.’

‘Yes?’

He is close to sleep now, so it seems, or fainting.

She explains how English was the language in which Wolfson’s hated mother used to bombard him daily with a stream of meanness and invective. His strategy was, immediately upon hearing the English words, to substitute it in his head with words or fragments from other languages of which the English sounds reminded him. He wanted to decapitate and disempower the language. The problem, she explains, was that the more he tried to forget, the more he forced himself to remember. The wounds that the mother tongue had carved on him were reopened by every attempt to displace them. And yet, and yet. His project, she explains, also opened a glimmer of possibility that, one day, he would be able to forge a new relationship with the mother tongue. That he would be able to return to it, as if to a lost land.

She looks at Cornelius. He is asleep, as pale as ash.

Vera

‘One evening there was barking at the gate. When we came out of the house, our dog was on fire. A streak of light through the garden. Back and forth. It was terrible. Frank had to shoot the dog through the head with his pistol.’

Vera sinks back into the couch.

‘The security guard had vanished. Somewhere in the dark, we knew, the gang was waiting. But the pistol must have frightened them off. Nothing further happened. But, yes, that was the last straw. A month later we left Joburg.’

Contrary to plans, it is not in Frank and Vera’s villa in a desert ghetto where she gets to see her sister for the first time since their father’s funeral. Over the phone, beforehand, Vera had gone on about their desert house. A spacious place, brand new, a lawn and pool amidst all the sand. Very quiet. As safe as can be. The international school right there in the complex, inside the walls. Ondien was prepared for a visit to a sandy compound.

Instead, they are sitting here, across from each other, on the sixty-first floor of one of the highest buildings in Dubai. Ondien does not even know whose apartment it is. A cryptic SMS message from Vera was waiting on her cellphone when her plane landed: Change of plan. Meet me at HHHR Towers, Sheikh Zayed Road, apartment 6101 .

‘No, I’m not asking why you’re here in Dubai; I mean why are you here ? In this apartment?’

As she is speaking, Ondien gestures towards the living room, the soft furnishings, the tassels and shiny artefacts. Over Vera’s shoulder, she looks through the exterior glass wall. Vanishing points and horizons of the desert landscape multiply blindly in the mirrored façades of other buildings. In here the light is softened by dark brocade, deep pile carpets and chestnut wood. Arabic calligraphy on handmade paper is displayed on the walls.

Vera looks away, towards the desert reflections, and the desert itself, disappearing in the distant sunlight.

The last time Ondien saw Vera, she was elegant and upright on their covered patio, with the stiff neck and stacked hair of a Bryanston wife. Her forehead was unnaturally smooth, just a few fine lines around the mouth. Gold decorating the ears and hands. Over her shoulder the gardener was visible in his blue overalls, out of focus. When Frank joined them, Vera’s voice became louder, switching to whiny nasal English, the hypocrite-speak of corporate Northern Johannesburg.

Now Vera is disorientated, restless. She looks around as if she is searching for something, as if she has forgotten what it is that makes one important.

‘Things didn’t work out as expected,’ she says. ‘Dubai isn’t all it’s made out to be. Frank and I aren’t what we used to be.’ Ondien nods. Vera continues. ‘Frank’s company is teetering on the edge. A month ago the board asked him to resign.’

‘Surely he’ll get rewarded handsomely — doesn’t his contract provide? Isn’t that how things work in that world?’

Vera looks away.

‘There are investigations,’ she says. ‘It’s been going on for months.’

She explains that the South African and British tax authorities are auditing Frank. That the company is alleging that he has enriched himself, there will probably be fraud charges. The company won’t pay him a cent pending completion of all this.

‘And our investments … ’ She shakes her head. ‘There is little left. Falling markets. Huge legal fees in different countries. There is talk that the Brits or South Africans may issue a warrant for his arrest, that they’re going to freeze accounts. Issues here in Dubai around extradition … My own life’ — she spreads out her fingers, looks at her own hand — ‘has taken a different turn.’

She tells of the Arab, owner of a Dubai construction company, of the romance which has flourished so unexpectedly.

‘I just knew,’ she says vehemently, ‘there was life in me yet.’ She taps with perfect nails against her sternum. ‘I couldn’t just roll over with Frank. How many sacrifices haven’t I had to make already? My own happiness has to count for something too.’ She bursts into tears. While weeping, she gestures towards the apartment’s interior. ‘I’m living here now, with Shahin. How could I resist? He’s awoken something in me again.’

She blows her nose, finds her strength again.

‘But I’m also scared. After all the wining and dining, he suddenly became very possessive.’

She recounts how she was still living with Frank and the children, but Shahin wanted her here. He started exerting pressure, at first subtly, but then he warned that he would have her charged with adultery, that she would be stoned to death on a public square, unless she agreed to marry him.

‘You have to understand,’ she says, ‘I don’t know if it’s true, whether such things can happen. Surely they’re not all that barbaric here, it’s not Iran or Afghanistan after all, but I don’t have a choice. I’m scared. And, if Frank goes to jail, somebody has to look after the children financially. Shahin wants a proper Muslim wedding …’