Jay was late for work and reeked of alcohol, Desiree was in a snitty sulk, Black was being his usual cantankerous self and I got by with a little help from the Colombian army. Somehow the shift passed. I only got to sleep at about two the next morning, too tired to sleep, and Ms Motsepe tip-tapped the back door five minutes later, or so it felt. I flew up in a rage and opened for her, couldn’t go back to sleep again and was too exhausted to go see Klara on Monday night. But at least I got a decent night’s sleep and was starting to feel half human by the time I went to work on Tuesday, where I had the privilege of subbing the letters, which were becoming increasingly telling. Apart from the whack-heads and old farts complaining about the waterworks, a black reader had written in to say whites didn’t understand that until the land was restored to blacks there would be conflict. In contrast, a white reader had argued that if blacks wanted to vote for idiots just because they were black then they had to suffer the consequences. So I went through the motions and finally got to the point where I could call Klara on my cell to find out whether I could come over.
“Yes,” she said, sounding bored, but I knew her wiles by now and, later, told her about the letters I’d been subbing, her mouth growing increasingly thin.
“Have you ever thought of leaving this country?” I said, doubly standing in her kitchen as she prepared our drinks, assuming that if she didn’t say anything about Kay’s car in my driveway, she hadn’t seen it.
“I see your girlfriend was over on Saturday night,” she said.
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“You don’t have to lie to me. I’m married. I don’t have a foot to stand on.”
“She’s a friend.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“We used to be lovers, but not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re so much better.”
“Why? Because older women don’t swell and they don’t tell?”
“I mean it.”
“Maybe you’ve got a problem.”
“Well, if I do, I’m not having sleepless nights about it. Are you?”
“I’ve got better things to worry about.”
“Like what?”
“This country.”
“Like I was saying: have you ever thought of leaving?”
“No. If it really comes to the crunch we’ll go and live in SouthWest.”
“But isn’t Namibia just a short-term solution?”
“What else can we do? We don’t have foreign passports. We’re Afrikaners, not liberals like you.”
I reminded her again that I wasn’t a liberal and she asked me where I would go to.
“I don’t know.”
“Ja, fuck me and forget me,” she said with a little entitled bitterness, which of course got my nether regions even more excited.
“What about Botswana,” I wondered.
Again, that purl.
“Hey, I’ve been to Gaberone and it’s a fine place.”
“What were you doing there?” she virtually sneered.
I had heard that the great exiles Abdullah Ibrahim and Hugh Masekela would be playing in that African city and I wanted to see them, and it. So I’d caught the train to Mafikeng to see a friend and then a bus to Gaberone, where I ended up on a balcony, drinking beer. After a few of those I staggered into a photographic exhibition, got talking to a woman and ended up in bed with her. Later a child came into the shack and said she liked the contrast of our skins. The woman wanted money and I gave her some, but I didn’t tell Klara about any of this. I just told her I ended up staying in some or other nurses’ hostel for the week, meaning black nurses, which got her pursing her thin lips again.
“I went to the Culture and Resistance Conference and rumours were flying that Abdullah would be playing with Masekela. In the meantime, speeches and resolutions were made and Ibrahim ended up playing alone in a large, flat, packed, stifling hall, telling a white crew member to get his arse off the stage. All the South Africans burst out laughing, having never seen a black man ticking a white one off.”
Klara wasn’t impressed.
“So the genius didn’t play with Masekela and when the latter’s turn came on the final night he played about being so near yet so far away from home, the stage getting progressively crammed with musicians elbowing their way on with a tacit nod from the trumpeter.”
Standing in the wings was a man on an outrageously high pair of platform heels, his legs like pins in ultra-tight striped jeans, a floral shirt as gaudy as a disco, and pink-rimmed shades as wide as the surrounding Kalahari sunset on a cheap postcard. In his hands he held a soprano saxophone, but it wasn’t the usual straight one. It was curved, which made it even smaller, and gave it a plasticky, lucky-packety look.
“Jazz,” she sneered.
“Ja. Township jazz. Kwela.”
I had wondered whether my empathy with this music was enough to gain me any political credibility and decided it probably wasn’t. Then again, I was here and not motorboating on the Vaal or something. There was, of course, the remote possibility that armed soldiers could burst in at any moment to capture or kill an activist, catching someone like me in the crossfire, but this was an open, cultural event.
“Why do you like that music?” she asked disapprovingly.
“Because it has a kind of … holistic quality to it,” I said, moving in on her. “It isn’t all just head; you can understand it without knowing exactly what the words mean. You can move to it, both mentally and physically. And there’s no separation of the two; in fact, there’s a marriage of them. So it’s easy on the ear. It has a rhythm that makes you move, loosens you up, makes you feel good, gives you space to think whatever you want to. It amuses you, cleanses you, leaves you feeling healthy. And if that isn’t intelligent – and democratic – what is?”
I was right up against her now, putting my arms around her, cupping her scapulae. She couldn’t offer a counter-argument, nor did she approve mentally, even if she was responding physically to me, so I turned her around and started kissing her neck, massaging her hips.
“You and Dolf could apply to emigrate. Places like England and New Zealand are always keen on teachers, and bookkeepers are always in demand, anywhere.”
“Dolfie would never do it,” she said, breathing a little heavier.
I slipped my hands up under her jersey and vest, cupping her full, sagging breasts, enjoying her instant response.
“And if I asked you to elope with me?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“We could go to Gaberone.”
“Never.”
“New Zealand?”
“I couldn’t live in a small wet place.”
By now my right hand had strayed down her stomach and into her panty, teasing her pubes, letting her feel my hard jeans behind her.
“Never?”
“Tell me about the man with the saxophone,” she said a little breathlessly.
“Everybody in the crowd had been waiting to see what Masekela would do once he spotted the man with the platforms, striped pants, floral shirt and pink shades,” I said, a little breathless myself. “Bra Hugh, the man with the big, angry-happy moon face who came from Witbank, which is about an hour’s drive from where I come from, Lyttelton, but aeons away otherwise.”
“What happened next?” she said half irritably, but responding to my hands.
So I told her how Masekela had finally given the Clintonite dresser his only chance to perform in front of a packed hall of smiling, sweating, pumping people, and how the man gave a perfectly cool, acceptable solo on his tiny saxophone. The crowd had almost collapsed with whooping, clapping, laughing applause, which was more or less how I felt as I took my hand all the way down and said I could live in a small, wet place – and a very wet one at that – easily.