Ingrid Winterbach - It Might Get Loud

He need not venture out to visit all the sites of depravity in the farmyard. Every detail of every one of the rooms has been branded into his memory. Especially the room with the swine’s head — the hub of the domain of the cloven-hoofed.

*

Maria Volschenk phones the visiting academic — the agricultural economist — the moment she arrives in the town. Yes, he does very much want to see her again. Probably as much in need as she of distraction so far away from home and hearth. He is bigger than she remembers. She has also not remembered how dark his eyes are. To be quite honest, she has not given him much thought of late. She leaves him to do the talking. It suits her. They once again sit outside. It’s a fine evening, cooler than during her previous visit, mid-May already, but still pleasant out-of-doors. There is a crescent moon — blood-pink. Is the Daisy Duck upper lip an appropriate description of his mouth — the outline of the lip exceptionally prominent and the lip furrow (the infra-nasal depression — she’s looked it up) particularly well defined? He is temporarily attached to the sociology department at the university. He is a specialist in the field of agricultural economics and land reform, but this evening he tells her about an article he’s recently read about theories of extinction — man-made and natural catastrophes. As far as she’s concerned a winning combination: the Daisy Duck upper lip and the cosmic catastrophes.

She lets him talk, she likes listening, even though her attention wanders from time to time. (Just slightly. Distracted by the blood-coloured crescent moon. The warm, caressing breeze. The thought of the mountain, or mountains, surrounding them. The texture of his skin over his collarbone.) Twelve possible scenarios, he says, some more probable than others, that could radically transform life on earth by 2050. He enumerates them. The decisive proof of the existence of several cosmic dimensions will radically alter our perception of reality, he says. To this point in time there have been many indications that the known universe is only a shadow of a higher-dimension reality. (Of this she has already taken note, of our limited perception of three dimensions — as on the spout of a teapot in a universe of nine or more dimensions.) Tomorrow she’ll be meeting Benjy, then she’ll probably find out the nature of the trouble in which he is embroiled. She has no idea what it could be. As she knows Benjy, it will form part of some or other entangled (always entangled, complicated, complicating) scheme or idea that has failed. This wouldn’t be the first time that something like that’s happened. A nuclear cataclysm can still not be totally excluded, says the man, although the end of the Cold War and the ongoing weapons control programme have appreciably reduced the threat of a global atomic wipe-out. But if a nuclear war should erupt between, say, countries like Pakistan and India, he says, in the course of which both countries would probably deploy their whole arsenal, then it would have an effect equivalent to about a hundred Hiroshima-sized bombs. Apart from the twenty million people who would be killed instantaneously, many outside the immediate area of conflict would perish in due course. A nuclear war of this magnitude would release approximately five million metric tons of soot into the upper atmosphere. Depending on prevailing weather patterns, soot particles could circle the globe for a week, and within months blanket the whole planet. The darkening sky will deprive plants of sunlight and disrupt the food chain for ten years. The subsequent famine will claim the lives of millions of people dependent for their survival on the marginal food supplies.

Yes, thinks Maria, talk to me about cataclysm, about famine, plagues of locusts and frogs. That is what I want to hear. Blood on the lintels and the death of the first-born. Heaven help us. The man is broad-shouldered. Women are apparently conditioned by evolution to react positively — sexually — to this, she’s read. For her part, she’s more attuned to a man’s buttocks. She likes the shoes he’s wearing. She couldn’t sleep with a man who dresses in the normal Afrikaner gear — a particular kind of Grasshopper or some such, whatever it’s called. A passion killer if ever there was one. Somewhere she shouldn’t lose sight of the locust and the frog. They have yet to help her through the First Gate. A thorough investigation of the natural world remains a priority. She is not intending to allow her attention to be diverted from this. And a dimple to boot, the man, what a fucking heartbreaker.

The rising of the oceans will radically transform the contours of the world as we now know it, he says. The approximately seventeen centimetres that the oceans have risen since 1900 (as a result of warm water taking up more space and the ongoing melting of the poles), is a fraction of what awaits us. By 2100 the polar regions will be free of ice, and the coastal contours will present a completely different aspect. Two hundred million people are at the moment living a metre above the present sea level, and that includes eight of the ten greatest megacities in the developing world. These cities will thus in due course have to relocate. Even a gradual rising of the sea level increases the danger of catastrophic storm swells, how much more with a more drastic rising.

He proceeds to mention the possibility — indeed, the probability — of a mammoth earthquake on the west coast of America; the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that there is a ninety-nine percent chance that California will before 2038 suffer an earthquake measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale. Another possibility of a natural catastrophe, though less likely, is the collision of the earth with an asteroid. And besides that, there is still a fifty percent chance of the eruption of a deadly pandemic disease.

It is late. The moon is riding high. The little lanterns sway in the warm breeze. They get up. He brushes his warm hand swiftly over her neck. Maria in the course of this night derives pleasure from the self-same Daisy Duck mouth, which he applies with surprising skill, and from the texture of his skin, and from his dark eyes, which in the semi-darkness smoulder in his head like spent coals. (Radioactive deposit.)

*

Her first thought the next morning is that today she’ll have to help manage, or solve, Benjy’s problematic situation, and that she’s not looking forward to it.

Why can’t he, like so many other children (the children of friends, for instance) lead a simple, reasonably successful, reasonably happy life? Ever since she can remember, he has constantly been in some sort of fix. Either he’s bamboozling somebody or he’s being bamboozled by someone. She’s not even sure what his sexual orientation is. She doesn’t know if he’s sure himself. Truth to tell, she’s never thought of him as a particularly sexual being (no time for sex between all his plotting and planning). And how would she know? Twenty-seven years old and he’s never given any indication of any passionate feelings for anybody. Once again — how would she know? What does the parent know about the hidden erotic life of the child and vice versa? Perhaps she’s always misread the signs. Denial. Is a parent supposed to feel sorry for a child? He’s never been lacking in initiative. It’s just that his initiatives are generally unwise, often with catastrophic consequences.

This morning there’s an additional problem. Maria has hardly left home, when spunky Joy Park, the designated guardian of her house and worldly possessions, serves notice that she’s ill. She thinks it’s serious. She’s been having severe pain of late, and she’s going for a series of tests today. The results, Maria realises, can have far-reaching consequences for her role as keeper of her house. If Joy Park, for whatever reason, can no longer keep an eye on her house, she’ll have to return to Durban earlier, and that she does not want to do.