Gavin is a little fatter, a little more heavy lidded. He watches Adam’s discomfiture through a lens of mild malice. ‘How’s the poetry coming along, Ad?’
‘Fine, fine.’
‘That’s good. I’m glad you’re not wasting your time up there. And how’re the weeds?’
‘Almost finished clearing them. Another day or two and they’ll be gone.’
‘Oh, that’s great,’ his brother says, opening a packet of pretzels and pouring them into a bowl. ‘Now you can plant something decent there.’
They are sitting in Gavin’s lounge, drinking beer. The room is fronted with glass, and the view of Robben Island, surrounded by sea, is like a picture frozen and framed for their enjoyment.
‘By the way,’ Gavin says, ‘that arrived for you by registered mail. I signed for it, I’m sorry, when I saw the surname. I only noticed it was yours afterwards.’
The envelope is big and brown – official looking. It’s the first correspondence he’s had from the outside world since his old life collapsed. He is almost excited, until he opens it: a summons to court, the date long past, for the traffic fine he’d got eight months ago. When he’d passed the spot this morning – the turn-off, with its one tree – on his way down to Cape Town, it had been the first time he’d thought of the incident in half a year. All of it feels very long ago; his sense of moral outrage seems almost antiquated.
‘What am I supposed to do now?’ he says. ‘You should’ve forwarded it to me.’
‘I meant to. But I didn’t get around to it.’
‘It says here they’ll issue a warrant for my arrest if I miss the court date. Are they going to arrest me?’
‘Ag, are you crazy? Don’t worry, just tear it up. That’s what I do with all my tickets. Nobody bothers about that sort of stuff these days.’
Adam doesn’t say more, but he’s troubled by guilt. He remembers how fired up he’d been at the time, how resolved he was to fight the issue, but he’d got distracted by other things, and now it’s too late. He turns his attention to Charmaine, who’s next to him on the couch, cross-legged and barefoot. Her hair hangs down loosely, curtaining her enormous eyes. ‘How are you?’ she whispers.
‘I’m doing all right, thanks.’
‘Your aura is clearer than before. Though there’s still some movement. Maybe too much. A lot of fire and turmoil, but it’s better than it was.’
Gavin takes a pretzel from the bowl on the table and crunches it with his mouth open. ‘I don’t mind telling you,’ he says, ‘that I think you look terrible.’
‘Gavin.’
‘Well, he does. He’s thin and dirty. He needs a haircut. He looks like a refugee.’ To Adam he says, ‘I’ve made a booking at a steak-house tonight. I’m going to fatten you up.’
‘No,’ Adam says. ‘I’ve got this party to go to.’ When his brother looks uncomprehending, he goes on: ‘I told you about it. It’s the reason I’ve come down here. We talked about it.’
‘Oh, ja,’ Gavin says vaguely. ‘Remind me again.’
As Adam runs through the details, Gavin takes on a bored, distracted expression. But he must be listening, because later, as Adam is about to leave, he suddenly announces, ‘It’ll never fly. This golf course thing of yours.’
‘It’s not mine, for God’s sake. It has nothing to do with me.’
‘Out there in the sticks. Who’s going to drive out there to play golf?’
‘It’s on a major new road,’ Adam says defensively. ‘And the landscape is part of the design.’
‘If you’ve got money in this thing, take it out. I’m telling you – sell your shares. Don’t get burnt.’
‘Shares?’ Adam says. ‘What are you talking about? I’ve got no money for groceries. How would I buy shares?’
The invitation to the party is lying on the kitchen dresser; Gavin picks it up and looks at it. ‘Genov,’ he says musingly. ‘That rings a bell.’
Adam takes the invitation back before another lecture can begin. ‘I’d better go,’ he says. ‘I’m late already.’
*
He doesn’t own a suit these days; he’s had to borrow one from Gavin. But the jacket is too big, so that the sleeves hang over his hands. Underneath it, his one good shirt is too tight for him, and it smells of mothballs. He feels flagrantly conspicuous, as if he’s dressed like a clown, though none of it is too obvious when he looks in the mirror. Nevertheless, he almost balks: it’s not just his clothes, but the whole evening ahead, that doesn’t fit him any more. Only the prospect of seeing Baby keeps him moving forward.
The house is in a wealthy suburb Adam doesn’t know. He has been driving slowly along leafy back roads for half an hour, map in hand, when the blaze of light and the blare of revelry tell him that he’s arrived. A liveried flunkey at the gate inspects his invitation, then tells him he will have to park out in the street, there is no place left inside.
The driveway is a long winding approach through trees, with fancy cars parked all along its length. Off to the side he glimpses tennis courts, a swimming pool, a paddock with horses. Only at the top of the drive does he emerge into the full spectacular vulgarity of what awaits him. A castle, all turrets and balustrades and battlements. Everything, from the stone to the architecture, appears to have been brought in from elsewhere. The effect is of an incoherent oddity, like some fantastic spaceship that’s crash-landed on top of this hill, with the survivors swarming over the wreckage. There are a lot of people. He can see them through the windows; they overflow the front stairs. He has a moment of wanting to turn around and run. He doesn’t belong and he’s sure everyone can see it.
Once his invitation has been inspected again, he’s allowed through the door. The impression of an accident continues inside, the roar of voices like the moment of impact, infinitely stretched in time. There is an air of crisis, without focus or centre; dance and talk and flirtation are going on everywhere, splintered and amplified by mirrors. But even here, Adam stays outside the frenzy, like a deaf man watching an orchestra. He feels very alone amongst the flesh and festivity. He sees the rooms without the people as cold, tiled space, broken by tasteless statues and expensive paintings, and himself pacing through all this desertion, his footsteps quavering outward in echoing concentric rings.
In a passage, next to a huge Chinese vase, he is confronted by a tall, grinning man with craggy good looks and dark hair combed back. His teeth are numerous and dazzling. Adam has seen the teeth before, on aerosol cans in the supermarket. Which is how he comes to recognize the famous golfer, who has designed the course for Canning. He has long since retired from the game and is more famous these days for his own brand of deodorant. ‘Whose friend are you?’ the golfer shouts, pumping Adam’s hand.
‘Canning’s. I’m looking for him, actually – have you seen him?’
‘Canning, Kenneth Canning.’
‘Never heard of him, old buddy. You look like you could use a drink!’
‘Never heard of him? But this whole thing is his idea.’
‘Must be some mistake, old buddy. This is Nicolai’s baby. Here, have some wine.’ He plucks a glass from the tray of a passing waiter and gives it to Adam. ‘Nicolai’s own label, from his wine estate. Enjoy!’ Then the famous golfer is gone, shaking the hand of somebody else in the crowd.
Adam downs the wine as he moves on. It’s dry and fragrant, an expensive taste – part of the costly waste that surrounds Canning. But although he can sense his friend close by, somewhere among these people, he can never quite find him. His panic is tempered by the many other faces in the heaving mass that he almost knows, faces on the edge of being familiar, like acquaintances from long ago: small local celebrities, television stars and sports stars, a notorious revolutionary who’d been in jail for fifteen years, socialites and politicians, even a well-known charismatic preacher. Though he has the impulse to greet these people, their names, their connection to him, stay out of reach; he hurries on from them, looking always for Canning, because close to him will be the one person he does want to see. As he enters each room, he feels hopeful and expectant, but as he pushes through the crowd, his eyes deflecting off the face of each new stranger, he becomes more and more despondent, until he gets to the next doorway. There is something dreamlike in the progression and futility, the hovering sense of quest.
Somewhere in the crush he meets Sipho Moloi, who greets him with bright uncertainty, before asking after the health of the minister.
‘No, no,’ Adam says, ‘I met you at Canning’s place.’
‘Whose place?’
‘Canning, Kenneth Canning. You know, where the golf course...’
‘Ah!’ His face lights up with recognition, then clouds over again. They both smile tightly at each other, anxious to escape.
‘I’m looking for him, actually – Canning, I mean. Have you seen him? Or Baby?’
‘Yes... I think I saw him... through there. But it was some time ago.’
Adam pushes through into a big courtyard, open to the sky. A live band is playing jazzily in the corner and people are dancing around a fountain that cascades into a stone pool in the middle. There is a roped-off platform to one side, supporting a bizarrely distinctive shape: a mock-up of a putting green, a bunker next to it, and a flag on a pole planted in the centre. Bunting and balloons hang overhead, and the wall is covered with a massive, blown-up backdrop of mountains and green kloof and desert stretching away.
Then he does see Baby. She’s dressed entirely in white – white dress, white shoes, white blossoms in her hair – and she looks radiant and virginal, as if she’s getting married. She’s talking to an older man standing against the wall, who has the air and the functional clothes of an impersonal attendant, a butler of some kind.
Having searched for her for so long, he doesn’t approach right away, but watches her for a while across the courtyard. She is laughing and animated, full of a vitality he hasn’t seen in her before. The dancing, the music, the crowd: now that he’s found her, none of these exist for him. But she seems to have drawn power from the swirling colour around her; she looks like one of the gilded, gifted company, with a future of possibility at her feet. As he starts towards her, a pang goes through him, like the blow of an axe; he feels he is looking at a memory, something already lost. Even when he’s right in front of her, she doesn’t notice him for a moment. Then her eyes fix on him, and for a second he has an impression again of the imbalance in her gaze.
‘What are you doing here?’ she says. Her displeased expression is almost instantly covered with a dazzling smile.
‘Canning gave me an invitation, of course.’
‘But how sweet.’
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he tells her.
‘Have you? Where?’
‘Everywhere. Room after room.’ He is close to her, so close that their bodies are in contact each time they lean in to speak. He can smell her perfume and feel the heat of her arm. He has a desperate impulse to act recklessly: press her into the wall, kiss her lingeringly in full view of all these people – claim her in some way. But at the same time he knows that it’s only because of the crowd that they can be intimate in public like this. He must get her away from here, to somewhere secluded and safe, where they can renew the bond between them. ‘Do we have to stay here?’ he says hoarsely. ‘Isn’t there somewhere we can go?’
She pulls back from him. ‘Are you mad?’ she whispers angrily. ‘This is the middle of a party. And I’m busy right now. Go and talk to Kenneth.’
‘Where is he?’
She gestures with a flick of her fingernails to where her husband is standing by himself at the back of the courtyard, a lonely figure, sunk in alcohol and shadow. Nobody is near him.
‘I saw a swimming pool in the garden as I came in,’ Adam tells her. ‘It looked quiet out there.’
Her eyes study him with amused disdain. She starts to shake her head, but at that moment a flurry starts up on the platform in the corner. A microphone is being tuned; lights are turning on; people are readying themselves for speeches. This is the perfect moment to slip away, with the crowd distracted, but she has taken a step back from him. ‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘I’ll speak to you later.’
‘I came here for you,’ he says again.
‘Well, you shouldn’t have.’ For a second her hand touches his arm, and his heart lifts. But her fingers tweak dismissively at his sleeve. ‘Your jacket doesn’t fit you,’ she says, and then she’s moving away.
He has a stunned moment of incomprehension: something has passed him by. Hadn’t he been clear? Why hadn’t she understood? They are two of a kind; neither of them belongs here, in this frivolous city crowd. But she is another person tonight, somebody he doesn’t know. The real Baby, the one that he wants to see, is still out there somewhere, in Gondwana, or in his poems.
He goes in the other direction, against the flow of people. Everybody is pressing in towards the corner where the lights are coming up. On the opposite side of the courtyard, in another universe entirely, Canning slouches against the wall; he gives the impression that he is propping up the building. Adam sees something in him that is both touching and repellent: he is the sort of person it would be easy to hurt and forget. But he beams delightedly when he sees Adam. ‘I thought you’d changed your mind,’ he says. ‘I thought you hadn’t come after all.’
‘I shouldn’t have,’ Adam says miserably. ‘I should have stayed at home.’
‘Isn’t it awful? I hate all this too.’ He looks around. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’
Adam follows Canning out of the courtyard. The irony isn’t lost on him, that he came here hoping to sneak off with Baby, and has ended up leaving with her husband instead. Canning takes him to a passageway with a closed door, on the other side of which is a darkened staircase; at the top of the stairs they are in another carpeted passage, edged by a railing on one side, from which they can look down on the courtyard below.
‘There,’ Canning says. ‘Now we can see without being trampled. Drink?’ He holds out a bottle of wine, which he’s gripping by the neck; when Adam refuses, he swigs from it himself. His face is flushed and sweaty, his tie and top button are undone. ‘Look at this lot,’ he says. ‘All the beautiful and powerful gathered together. How I’d love to fire-bomb this place.’
Adam scans the heads and foreshortened bodies down below, looking for Baby, but it’s hard to recognize anybody. From this perspective the whole scene has altered shape. A few minutes ago they were down there, in the throng; now they are like pigeons or gods, not part of the world they’re watching. His attention takes a few seconds to focus on the warm circle of light, with its brighter green circle of fake lawn and flag. A few figures are on the platform. The man in front, who is speaking through the microphone, is the famous golfer. He seems to belong up there, among the camera flashes and synthetic colours; his gleaming grin is like part of the set. He is making a joke, something about an Irishman and a caddy, and the answering laughter and applause rise buoyantly to the hidden watchers like a warm gas.
Then the golfer turns serious. His voice becomes low and confiding. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, friends and colleagues... How often in a lifetime can we say that the Good Lord gives us the chance to do something we’ve dreamed of since we were six years old? Yet that’s the sort of chance I’ve been given. To design my own golf course, to see it take shape in front of my eyes – well, it’s more than a sinner like me could hope for... but now it’s time,’ he goes modestly on, ‘for me to hand over to the man who’s given me this chance, the head honcho himself, the mover and shaker, Mister Liberty National, our friend and host tonight... Nicolai Genov.’
‘Oh,’ Adam says. The exclamation is involuntary: he is startled to recognise the older man Baby was speaking to earlier, the one he’d thought was a butler. And Mr Genov doesn’t entirely lose the self-effacing reserve, even under the hot lights. He is clearly used to making speeches, but he would obviously prefer, at the same time, to be elsewhere, in the background; and he brings something of the background with him, nebulous and indistinct, to the microphone.
‘My friends... I am not going to speak for long... This is a party, after all, and we shouldn’t let business get in the way of a good time...’
The accent is hard to place: partly Eastern Europe, but overlaid with other inflections. It is an international accent – the voice of a man who has lived in many different places. He seems to set each word down deliberately, like ornaments arranged on a windowsill.
‘... I want to say, if you look around you tonight... is it not good to see so many different people in one room – all different colours, different cultures, everybody mixed... this really is a new South African party!’
The banal phrase sounds like one of Canning’s. There’s a spatter of appreciative applause – people congratulating themselves – and from his vantage point Adam is briefly caught up in the picture: saris and business suits mingling with African fabrics and Arabic robes. Accents and languages twine companionably together; skins and beads rub agreeably against silk. Even the waiters, in their neutral tuxedos, are a harmonious mixture of black and white and brown. It really is like an advertisement for the new country.
‘As all of you know, just a few years ago this would not have been possible... but I’m proud to be part of it, my new mother country that has been so very good to me...’
More clapping, a whistle or two. Despite himself, a warm feeling expands in Adam; the impulse to belong is very strong. But at the same time he remains outside; he knows he’s here on sufferance, and there is something unreal about this gathering. It’s what’s absent, what isn’t here in this house, that Adam feels truly part of, and which makes him afraid.
‘... and this whole venture, our golf estate, is a reflection of this new, multi-cultural spirit...our partners are a mix of colours and backgrounds, like the faces in this room...’
At this moment, Adam sees Baby. He has been looking for her in the wrong place, among the crowd, when she is actually up on the platform, off to one side, half in the spotlight. The tension in her body is keyed up, in a different register to her normal state. He wonders what she is doing there, as if she’s about to make a speech, and that thought leads him, by association, to the man standing next to him.
‘What about you?’ he whispers to Canning. ‘Don’t you have to speak?’
‘Me? No, of course not.’
‘But why not? Isn’t this your project?’
Canning shrugs impatiently. ‘For God’s sake,’ he says. Down below, Mr Genov is handing over to somebody else, the dapper black man, Enoch Nandi, whom Adam had met at Gondwana over Christmas. On that occasion Canning had been deferential and polite towards him, but now he murmurs snidely, ‘There’s the black empowerment camouflage.’
‘I thought you liked him.’
‘Where’d you get that idea? No, I despise him. I despise all of them. It’s just a game – a game you have to play.’
Fronts and public faces: power hiding in the shadows. And something comes to Adam in this moment: for the first time he understands that it is exactly the quality in Canning which evokes pity and contempt – the blurred, smudged quality, the invisibility – that most defines him, and is his greatest strength. In his oblique way, he is the moving force that set this whole thing ticking; it’s because of him that all these people are in this courtyard tonight, yet almost nobody here knows his name or recognizes his face.
Adam turns his head to look, almost wonderingly, at his friend, but at this moment Canning is staring downward with an expression of sadness and spite and longing. He seems to be focused on the crowd, but then he says, in a small voice, ‘See that. In front of everybody. She doesn’t care who knows.’
‘Knows what?’
Canning says dispiritedly, ‘That man has been her lover for the past six months.’
‘Who?’
But then he sees. It’s Baby that they’re both looking at, as she leans toward Nicolai Genov with the same air of heightened excitement that she’s worn all evening, whispering something to him behind her hand, and in the tilt of their bodies towards each other, the casually possessive way he is holding onto her elbow, it is blindingly obvious. In some way, Adam realizes, he’s known it since the first moment he saw her tonight, and yet the shock is like something new and freshly minted, opening out under his rib-cage. The numbness that follows, the hollow absence of emotion, is like a kind of feeling in itself. He does the calculation: six months – more or less when he’d first met her.
‘That dirty Eastern European scumbag,’ Canning says, then glances at Adam with a rueful smile. ‘There. Now you really know all our secrets.’
The formal part of the evening is breaking up below. Enoch Nandi has finished his speech; the applause has faded; the lights are going down. But it’s as if the glow is still on the little party down there – her and the old butler-satyr, and the attentive acolytes around them. Adam and Canning are stranded meanwhile on the cold, dark edge of the arena, both holding onto the railing as if it will keep them from falling.
‘Fun’s over,’ Canning says. ‘Now we can really get drunk.’ He notices Adam’s expression and puts a slack arm over his shoulders. ‘Don’t take it so badly,’ he says. ‘It’s nothing serious, just a little affair. That’s how she is. I don’t mind too much. As long as I don’t lose her.’
‘Maybe you don’t mind,’ Adam says. ‘But I do. Very much.’
‘Oh, Adam. Still my loyal friend and protector, after all these years.’
A cold voice behind them says, ‘Sir.’
They turn. The man is elegantly dressed. He looks like another guest at the party, but a coarseness in his broad, flat face signals something else. A real butler, maybe – but what kind of butler wears a gun? Adam can see the holster under the man’s jacket as he says, ‘This is a private area. You shouldn’t be up here.’
‘It’s all right,’ Canning says. ‘I know Mr Genov very well.’
‘And you are...?’
‘My name is Canning. Kenneth Canning.’
The man’s eyes are dark and depthless, like two pebbles pressed into putty. He shakes his head contemptuously. ‘Never heard of you,’ he says. ‘You’d better go back downstairs.’
*
When Adam gets back to the flat, he’s full of a leaden desire to sleep. The last thing he wants is more talk, but Gavin has waited up. He’s in front of the television, watching reruns of sports highlights, but he switches it off when Adam comes in. ‘How was your party?’ he says.
‘It was all right,’ he says, hovering near the door.
‘I checked up on your friend,’ Gavin tells him balefully. ‘Your Nicolai Genov. I thought his name sounded familiar.’
‘I don’t want to speak about him.’
‘He’s only a big player in organised crime. Internationally, mind you. Nothing to be concerned about.’
‘I’m not concerned. I don’t even know him.’
‘He ran from prison in Europe about ten years ago. Jumped bail in a big Mafia trial and came here. He made friends in the old white government, spread a lot of money around. He changed his name, got his citizenship sorted. Now he’s in with the new crowd. He’s riding high these days, but he can’t travel to a lot of countries in case he gets arrested. A very dangerous customer.’
Adam has taken in too much tonight; he has no room for amazement. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ he says.
‘You don’t think you should be worried? You’re in with a bad bunch. Genov owns a lot of stuff – hotels, casinos, a wine farm or two. But my contacts tell me he’s still connected with his old pals in Europe. The business stuff is a front. There’s a lot going on, Ad. Money laundering, drug smuggling, maybe human trafficking. You don’t want to get involved.’
‘You’re right, I don’t,’ Adam says, but then he remembers something Canning told him. ‘He’s had a bad press,’ he says, moving towards the door. ‘I’ve got to sleep, Gavin. I’m leaving early in the morning.’
‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
‘I won’t. Good-night.’
‘Good-night,’ Gavin says, his voice shot through with outrage. But when he comes to the door of Adam’s room a minute later, his tone has changed again; now he sounds plaintive. ‘You can’t get me in with these guys, can you?’ he says.