Masande Ntshanga - The Reactive

The company he works for lies in an old office park in Pinelands. Their building, one of fifty five-story units that face out to Ndabeni, an industrial suburb north of Maitland, came as a last resort to him. Early on, when Ruan started applying for posts as an assistant network administrator, he ruined his CV by losing three jobs in succession. The reason for dismissal was a slew of unforeseen panic attacks: from the copy machine to the kitchen area, he could be found curled up, or fainting on carpet tiles or buffed lino. Even though he always went back to work a week later with an apology, and sometimes a note from a doctor he’d paid to say it was epilepsy, he was always fired. Over the phone, even as his former employers expressed their sympathy and good wishes, they described him as too great a liability to keep on a payroll, and suggested he seek out a program for special care.

For a while, it felt as if there had been no options left open to him, and then — after a series of emails, all dispatched with great reluctance, but pushed by the pressure of an increasing interest rate — his uncle relented and put him on a conditional intern’s contract. His uncle’s oldest son had recently relocated to the UK, and this freed up the flat in Sea Point, where Ruan was to stay, paying rent into his uncle’s account. This is what led to his present situation. Ruan’s probation period extended itself to more than four years, and even though he renews his contract every twelve months, there’s never any mention of a pay increase. This is how he still gives a lot of what he earns to his uncle and the bank.

I squash the cigarette ember with my toe and kick it towards the gutter. It rolls in a light breeze, stopping just shy of the pavement’s lip.

I don’t know if I thought of myself as having already taken the money, Ruan says. I just saw it there, when that SMS came, and I thought other things could happen.

I move away from the fence and settle myself on the edge of the pavement. Ruan doesn’t follow, and for a while the two of us speak without facing each other. Two cars drive past us and after they’ve gone, I notice a figure standing in the house opposite. I can’t tell whether it’s a man or a woman, but I can see them looking out at us through a veil of curtain lace. Eventually, when it seems like our eyes have met and locked for a long time, the figure takes a step back and draws the curtain closed between us. I lean back and feel the tar and pebbles digging into my palms.

Then I take a breath and decide to tell Ruan what I’m thinking.

The two of us, I say, we’ve already accepted the money from the client.

Ruan tells me that he knows we have. He sits down on the pavement next to me and kicks a pebble into the road. He says he hopes Cissie has, too.

It takes Cecelia another half an hour to return. The three of us take the lift to her flat, and as we do, she doesn’t speak to me or Ruan.

Cissie walks into her kitchen and starts rifling through the cabinets. Then she crouches and opens the drawers beside the stove.

I’m looking for the Industrial, she says. In case anyone’s interested.

Ruan and I take our seats on the living-room floor in silence, facing each other from the opposite ends of her coffee table.

My aunt died today, Cissie says. It happened just over an hour ago.

She dips her head back behind the counter, rifling through more cabinets. Then she opens a coffee tin and, finding it empty, lets it roll out of the kitchen.

It’s weird, she says. First, we’re picking twigs. Then I take the train and she’s dead.

Cissie turns to the basin, plugs in a drain stopper and starts running the hot water. She removes a heap of cups and plates from the sink and stacks them on the dish rack. Then she draws back the short floral curtains and pushes the windows open to let in a gust of air. The water slams hard against the sink. She squeezes soap against the steam.

On the other side of the counter, Ruan and I watch.

Cissie whisks the soap to a lather with her hand. Then she closes the tap and flicks the foam off her fingers. The crazy thing is, she says, I almost didn’t bother going today.

I return my eyes to my knees and notice a plastic bottle lying on its side under her table. I reach for it and find it still closed. Then I get up and hand it to her.

Cissie receives it with a nod, unscrews the lid and sniffs the top. She starts to huff and the bottle crinkles inward. Done, she leaves it to drop in the sink. She brushes both hands over her face. Then she arranges the plates on the dish rack.

The client, she says. When does he want to meet?

I look at Ruan. He keeps his eyes on his phone.

Tonight, he says.

Cissie nods. I want the money, she tells us.

Then she reaches for a dishcloth and dries her hands and elbows. She turns around.

Do you?

This is what she asks us.

Ruan and I fall silent for a moment. Then we answer her at the same time. We tell her that we do.

Cissie finds half a pack of Tramadol on her top shelf. She’s kept it in an old Horlicks tin above the kitchen counter, saving it for a day like today. We split the pills over her glass coffee table. Then, while passing around a glass of water, Cissie gets a text message from Julian. It’s about a Protest Party at his flat off Long Street. We take what’s left of the pills.

Outside, the sky’s grown dark again, thick and almost leaden in texture. To the north, columns of rain emerge from the hills that once came together, more than a million years ago, to create the crest and saddle of Devil’s Peak. We smoke another cigarette with the painkillers. Then we wait for a taxi out on the main road. I get the feeling, as we do, that the sky could drop down on us at any moment.

Thankfully, the trip doesn’t take long. The sky shows no interest in us, and we arrive at Julian’s an hour later. Standing across the road from his place, I realize that my hours have become something foreign to me, that they’ve taken on a pattern I can no longer predict.

Looking out over the cobblestones on Greenmarket Square— each orb cut from a slab of industrial granite, connecting the cafés on the right with the Methodist Mission on Longmarket, where hawkers and traders from different sectors of the continent erect stalls and barter their impressions of Africa — I feel my thoughts branch out and scatter, grow as uncountable as the cobblestones beneath us, as if each thought were tied to every molecule that comprises me, each atom as it moves along its random course.

Ruan waves to the security guard. I ring Julian’s intercom and we get buzzed to the eleventh floor. On our way up, we stand apart, the mirrors in the lift reflecting the fluorescent lights. We remain quiet, facing ourselves as our bodies get hauled through thick layers of concrete. I lean against the lift wall and think of Greenmarket Square again, and how, not too far from here, and less than two hundred years ago, beneath the wide shadow of the muted Groote Kerk, slaves were bought and sold on what became a wide slab of asphalt, a strip divided by red-brick islands and flanked by parking bays where drivers are charged by the hour; behind them, yesteryear’s slave cells, which are now Art Deco hotels and fast-food outlets. I think of how, despite all this, on an architect’s blueprints, the three of us would appear only as tiny icons inside the square of the lift shaft, each suspended in an expanse of concrete.

Then the lift doors slide open.

Cissie walks out of the lift and Ruan and I follow a step behind, trailing her down a long open walkway. We don’t say anything else about her aunt. The three of us don’t mention our meeting with the client, either. Instead, we reach Julian’s flat in silence, propping ourselves up in front of his white door.