Ingrid Winterbach - It Might Get Loud

Her cheeks are burning with indignation. It’s bitterly cold outside. The streets are wet. The leaves scurry underfoot. She slams her car door. She sees Tobie standing forlornly in the doorway. Fucking whore, she says softly to herself — the woman who claims the role of Sofie’s last confidante for herself. Fucking fool, she snarls at Tobie as well for good measure, but she knows that she’s actually addressing herself: fucking fool, fucking fool, fucking fool.

She lies awake for a long time that night. Would that have been the last thing that Sofie coveted — a greyhound? Like the greyhounds who rested their sleek-coated skulls in her hand for a few moments, all those years ago. So is that what Sofie set her heart on? On such a pearl-grey animal.

*

The last part of Karl’s journey is difficult. It’s hell , he thinks, it’s as close as you’ll ever get to hell. He is tired, sweaty, he can’t reach Josias on his cell phone to say that he’s almost there (not even a child answering the phone). Just as well Josias sent him directions earlier.

He’s hardly registering any impressions any more. He sees the mountain. He sees the sea. He sees the harbour. But everything is menacing; in his ears there are demonic choirs singing full blast: Downfall, downfall.

He finds the place without any difficulty. Good sense of direction. That always impressed Juliana. You’re like a homing pigeon, she used to say. Approvingly. I’m not so great on the wide open spaces, he wanted to say then, but leave me in the centre of New York, then you’ll be really impressed. He and Hendrik, on their trips from one city to the next, on trains and buses, down alleyways and backstreets in quest of bands and gigs, never got lost. But leave him on a desolate plain, like the never-ending landscape he’s just crossed, and he develops a constriction as big as a warehouse in his chest.

He stops. It’s late afternoon. A strange light slants down. He phones Josias to say he’s arrived. Fortunately he picks up. I’m coming down, he says.

Karl gets out. His body aches from sitting for such a long time and from the sustained tension. The wound in his leg throbs as if it’s infected. He leans against the car. He sees two figures approaching on the road above him. They are outlined in silhouette against the throbbing late-afternoon light (he feels it behind his eyelids). The one in front must be the Josias-guy. Slightly behind him a taller man. He hardly expects Iggy to form part of the welcoming committee.

The sun is in his eyes. He is aware somewhere of his heart doing something odd; a feeling of thunderous menace in sync with his accelerated heartbeat. An imminent paralysis. Something inexorably bearing down upon him. No way out any more. Time to face the music. He can tell from the angle at which the Josias-guy is coming down the road. He can tell from the angle at which the man carries his head, from his fluttering Old Testament beard. Something God-only-knows is terribly wrong and he doesn’t want to know what it is.

When the man reaches him, extends his hand in greeting, and Karl sees the look in his eye, then he knows: It’s tickets with Iggy.

‘Afternoon,’ says the man. ‘I am Josias Brandt.’ He tilts his head at the man behind him. ‘Jakobus Coetzee. A friend of mine.’

Jakobus also extends his hand. Grey-blue eyes in a weathered face. Sympathetic eyes, which further confirms Karl’s suspicion.

‘Where is Ignatius?’ Karl asks, his voice slightly hoarse.

‘I had him committed to a psychiatric hospital yesterday,’ says Josias. ‘I warned you, he got totally out of hand. He started threatening to burn the place down.’

Committed to a psychiatric hospital. Iggy.

‘Jakobus will fill you in,’ says Josias, ‘I must attend to a few pressing matters quickly. Unfortunately it can’t wait.’ And he strides off on sturdy legs.

‘Come with me,’ says Jakobus. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

Karl follows Jakobus up the hill. It’s fortunately not too steep, because the wound in his leg is hurting so badly and both his legs feel so lame that he thinks he may not be able to make it all the way to the top. On one side of the road there are pigs. He recoils involuntarily. Contamination. He doesn’t do animals with unhygienic habits — especially not pigs — and here to boot it stinks to high heaven. (Perhaps he should after all have had himself hypnotised.) On the other side of the road there are geese. They gabble. The souls of the dead, Iggy said.

They take the winding road uphill, into the afternoon sun. Karl keeps his gaze fixed on Jakobus ahead of him, looks neither to the left nor to the right. He is vaguely aware of figures standing next to the road watching them. They walk until they reach a series of buildings resembling bunkers.

‘Used as arms depots in the nineteenth century,’ says Jakobus.

He unlocks a heavy gate. It opens into a wide, dark passage. Karl’s eyes are not yet quite accustomed to the sudden gloom in here; he can hardly distinguish all the objects against the wall. There are cupboards containing things, and sculptures, and large, unidentifiable objects, some of them covered with plastic.

They enter one of the huge rooms. Out of the corner of his eye, still in the half-light, Karl registers a plethora of things, without trying to get an overall impression. At the far end of the room — more like a hall — are Jakobus’s living quarters. Mattress on the floor to the left, chairs, crates, a log or two on the right, and behind that, against the wall, sculptures. Jakobus would seem to be a sculptor.

Jakobus points Karl to one of the garden chairs. He makes him some tea. The water for the tea he taps from a big plastic container. Karl briefly considers the hygiene of the setup, but lets it go. The kettle sits on a crate, next to a computer (a very old model). Jakobus potters away wordlessly. This gives Karl an opportunity to try to take in something of the room. His capacity for absorption is limited at the moment, he realises, his level of attention very shallow. As is his breathing.

Jakobus hands him a mug of hot tea: strong, sweet. He himself takes a seat on one of the logs, also with a mug of tea, which he places next to him on a crate. He slowly rolls a cigarette. He hasn’t yet uttered a word.

‘What happened to Ignatius?’ Karl asks.

‘He and Josias no longer saw eye-to-eye. To put it mildly. That’s the short version. The long version is probably much more complex.’

‘Was it so bad that he had to be taken away?’ Karl asks.

‘That I can’t judge,’ says Jakobus. ‘But your brother was very aggressive. He was acting oddly. He wore women’s clothing and threatened Josias with a stick. Josias is not a man to put up with being threatened on his own turf.’

Karl looks up. High, vaulted ceiling. The psychic saw two men. Negative goings-on. He can’t say that he senses anything particularly negative around Jakobus, but perhaps he’s still just too exhausted to distinguish between good and evil. At the moment he’s simply grateful for the man’s sympathetic and supportive presence, because he needs time to gather his wits.

*

They both have another cup of tea. Jakobus slowly rolls himself another cigarette. He doesn’t talk. Karl just sits, grateful for the silence. Then Jakobus offers him a beer, helps himself to one as well. That, too, they drink in silence.

When Karl is feeling calmer, somewhat reinvigorated, he asks if he can see Iggy’s room. And the pig’s head — if such a thing exists.

‘It does,’ says Jakobus. ‘The pope.’

They walk down the dark passage with all its strange objects again. Karl tries to register as little as possible of his surroundings. There are too many things here. He can’t afford to register anything except what’s in his immediate field of vision. They walk past a second room, also choc-a-fucking-block with things, Karl notes from the corner of his eye. Whose insane idea are these chambers — Josias’s? No wonder Iggy went half off his rocker. He would too, if he had to stay here.