14

MOON DREAMS

WHEN EDDIE STUMBLED AGAINST THE TRADING STORE DOOR, it was not Khanya who opened it, but his daughter Jo. She pulled his arm round her neck to help him inside, saying in a flat voice, ‘Hullo, Dad.’

‘Wha’ you doing here, Jo?’

‘I’ve come to take over. You need to sell the store. It’s enough now.’

‘Can’t take over.’ He gave her a muzzy grin. ‘Mine, not yoursh.’

She shook her head.

‘If you’re no longer competent, it’s my duty to take charge. So that’s what I’m doing.’

‘Boshy-boots.’ It had been one of his pet names for her when she was an earnest teenager; now it came in a blast of brandy fumes and spittle.

‘Damn right.’ Struggling not to retch, she half-dragged him through the dark store to the family rooms behind it, then manoeuvred him in front of the armchair where he spent oblivious nights and toppled him into it.

She stood with a thudding heart looking down at him. This sozzled wreck, this emaciated, trembling, smelly old man in tramp’s clothes was her father and only parent, and all she felt for him was rage and shame. Mainly rage that night, because in the same post as Khanya’s letter asking for help had come a letter from the university administration warning that her end-of-year exam results would be withheld until her outstanding fees had been paid. If they were not, it was regretted that there could be no admission next year.

Jo had always believed that her father would do his best for her, despite his failings. Now she yelled, ‘You don’t care any more. You’re disgusting!’

His eyes wandered up to her furious betrayed face. ‘Zat you, Jo-Jo? Why—?’ But he was too drunk to articulate the question she had asked so often as a child: ‘Why are you being so horrible?’

It was no use trying to say anything to him tonight, she realised, and left him mumbling nonsense. Tomorrow she’d talk to Philomena and Khanya, contact the bank, and ask Dr Ulrich about institutions for alcoholics.

Jo made up the bed in her old room and ran a bath to wash off the grime of her long bus journey. She lay there until the water was lukewarm and the daddy-long-legses were dancing down the wall again, wondering if the bank would give her a student loan to complete her degree. Didn’t someone have to sign surety? And would she need good marks to get one? With a shudder she remembered laughing off indifferent results in the June exams, saying she’d just have to work harder for the finals in November.

Time’s up, she thought as she dried herself. The sash window that no longer opened because its cords had rotted threw squares of moonlight on the dusty floor. There were looping arcs of footprints round the bed. Her backpack lay slumped where she had thrown it, stuffed with the files of notes she had brought home to cram for the exams. What was the point now?

From his back yard room, Khanya heard her sniffling herself to sleep.

Not all the wildlife in Crocodile Flats had been decimated by the drought and gangs of shack boys with catties. The rats were too cunning, and there were still raucous toads hibernating under the damp rocks near the stagnant pools in the river bed. No water had run here for three years. The most recent casualties were the swifts, which had abandoned their collapsing warrens of nests along the banks in favour of the new municipal dam on the edge of town where there was plenty of mud.

Mad Zizwe went to the river bed every night after work to train his three dogs to hunt the meerkats that had burrowed into the deserted warrens. When disturbed, meerkats turned into streaks of golden-brown fur that hurtled out of one hole and into another: good prey for training.

In the moonlight he flung out his arm and commanded, ‘Go, Magangeni! Go after them! Bite the back of the neck!’

Magangeni meant ‘the nomadic one’ – a restless youngster. He was wilful and did not yet have a sense of obedience; he would need discipline and encouragement to fly at his prey like a well-aimed spear instead of galloping round in circles. His parents stirred but made no move to follow. Esihle and Nkunzi were older and wiser, respectful of their owner’s role as leader of the pack.

In the prison library, Mad Zizwe had seen pictures from ancient Egyptian tombs with dogs just like his childhood companions, lean and long-muscled, their slender muzzles raised and bodies alertly poised, as if listening. They’d come south, he read, with the great migration of farming tribes and their cattle; speedy partners in the hunt and resolute guardians of huts and kraals. Survivors like me, he often thought. These three had been his sole friends since his discharge. When he found a place of his own at last, he’d breed them to equally noble mates.

They had a proper name now: Africanis, dog of Africa.

The settlement did not quieten down until early morning, a few hours before people had to get up again. Music thumped from ghetto blasters, voices yelled, TVS blared, kids screamed, shebeen clients roared with laughter over slopping tables, fists hammered on rickety doors, beaten women howled their pain, and bone-thin dogs barked and barked at shadows stumbling by in the alleys. Gunshots were heard so often that people hardly noticed unless they were close. The only islands of calm were the night vigils: people sitting with their dead by candlelight, shawls over heads, hands clasped, singing or praying or talking in whispers of better times.

There was a third signalling of the miracle that night. The full moon laid a benison over the parched land, coating its stark contours with silver and gentling the hollows to pools of velvet blackness. Those who could not sleep noted a special radiance hanging in their windows; many nodded off into pleasant dreams instead of the usual nightmares.

Sweetness dreamed of peach blossom and vanilla cupcakes and Rejoice’s new shoes.

Tsietsi dreamed of double cheese burgers and chips smothered in tomato sauce.

Philomena’s legs twitched under the blankets as she ran for a netball and catching it, stood still and raised it in upstretched fingers towards the goal, a carefree schoolgirl again.

Khanya conjured up an electronic till for the gents’ outfitters he hoped to own one day – even better than Saloojee’s, with wardrobes of tailored suits and glass shelves with neat piles of immaculate folded shirts.

Ma Sicelo dreamed of a different shop, a general dealer’s emporium stocked right up to the ceiling, with Lily as her assistant and computer operator.

Pastor Nazaret planned a mail-order business for bespoke hair shirts.

Queenie wore a proud smile as she welcomed a jiving Madiba to her new nightclub.

Greg Ingram dreamed his once-elegant Cassie into a spotless kitchen while she dreamed of babies, and Jo, puffy-eyed, imagined delivering them.

Dulcie Pybus was lost in a reverie of the moon goddess Isis wreathed in cats. Winifred lay wide awake in the next room, planning murder.

Sister Hilary with her skirts tucked up played dream hopscotch with Sister Nokwe, cheered on by Sister Dineo and all the little Grade Ones she taught finger-painting.

‘Father! Father!’ Sister Immaculata tossed in ecstasy on the coir mattress whose lumps were thrown into cruel relief by small serrated circles of mock leather stitched together. But she wasn’t calling Father Liam; she was being thrown up in the air and caught by her own jolly father, who had died when she was four, leaving a vacuum she could never fill.

Swart Barend had a black-maned lion in his rifle sights as Tannie Charmaine snored comfortably by his side, savouring a dream melktert.

Rooi Barend dreamed of Salomie writhing like a bronze eel in the foam of the motel’s net curtains.

Benjamin drove into Jerusalem in a blue Porsche, to the hosannas of a throng waving hotel-management diplomas.

Dr Ulrich was lost in a fantasy where he discovered the ultimate HIV vaccine by analysing the pula bushes that grew on the koppies.

Girlie Ming sat opposite the Aga Khan at a green baize poker table with a heap of Krugerrands between them, holding a royal flush.

Raylene swept into a grand restaurant on a lover’s arm, wearing a midnight-blue cape with a diamond clasp.

Mad Zizwe dreamed that his dogs were hunting impala in the bush, bounding through moonbeams instead of sullen smoke.

And Father Liam, though he would rather die than admit it in the morning, was directing a Hollywood movie with Melanie Griffiths in the lead and a chorus of warbling nuns in wimples set off by hibiscus flowers and Hawaiian skirts.

In distant Pretoria, Hendrik Ossewa grumbled towards his moonlit bathroom to mix another glass of Eno’s. He never dreamed if he could help it. Having the insistent ghosts of his ouma and his mother hanging around was taxing enough.