At the Edge of the Desert Read online

  AT THE EDGE OF THE DESERT

  ALSO BY BASIL LAWRENCE

  Henry First

  Published in 2021 by Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd

  Company Reg No 1953/000441/07

  The Estuaries No. 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, 7441, South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

  www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za

  © 2021 Basil Lawrence

  This is a work of fiction. With the exception of public figures, any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. Names, characters and organisations are the products of the author’s imagination, and are used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  First edition, first printing 2021

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  ISBN 978-1-4859-0409-0 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4859-0464-9 (ePub)

  Cover design by publicide

  Text design by Fahiema Hallam

  Set in Adobe Caslon Pro

  To Georgie, my gentle muse

  Contents

  Lüderitz

  Kolmanskop

  Elizabeth Bay

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Lüderitz

  Within a few weeks I’d settled back into my old routine. My days began with cossie and goggles wrapped in a towel. I’d follow the road down to the Shark Island pool – a quick walk through Lüderitz – for a morning swim before returning home to edit my documentary. I spent my time attempting to make sense of South African prison gangs, struggling to decide if my film should focus on the men or their make-believe uniforms.

  Shark Island, despite its name, is a peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway. On it a sign reading HAIFISCH points to the campsite, situated on high ground to avoid flooding by rough seas, and another, SCHWIMMBAD, to the tidal pool built adjacent to the Atlantic. Occasionally I’d be early enough to see trucks loading the overnight catch they’d transport to the processing factories. Here the southern ocean is a fishy stew and my mornings smelt of ammonia, from iced pilchards and steenbras, just like those of my childhood.

  And on some days – like today, when the distant campground was almost empty save for a few tents, their canvas pulled taut over their curved poles, making dull-coloured igloos – I’d set off again in the afternoon. I walked at a good pace, even though the strong wind threatened to make me lose my footing, because I was due to meet a striking man on Shark Island and couldn’t be late.

  I spat into my goggles and rubbed them clean with a finger. I slipped off my jeans. Pulled on my swimming trunks before anyone could see me, and threw myself into the cold water that was gritty with sand.

  The Atlantic spewed foam over the pool’s seaward wall, which separated me from the darker surf, small rocks on that wall like bobbing seals. I pushed away from the shallow end, kicking through the chaos, with both arms extended.

  When I was a teenager I’d easily clock forty lengths of freestyle, sometimes more, in a session. Back then I could swim an entire length of the half-Olympic in a single breath.

  I counted my strokes until my mind began to wander.

  I found my rhythm.

  Arm reached forward.

  Fingers fully extended before they caught the water.

  Head turned to the side.

  Air in.

  Face down again to exhale without thinking as my lagging arm broke the surface.

  Jago arrived half an hour late, walking confidently towards me, without apology, in linen trousers and a cotton shirt more suited to the Mediterranean than the southern Atlantic. His hair hung loose, so he kept raking it back with his fingers to stop the south-westerly blowing it across his face.

  He dipped a hand into the pool.

  I said, ‘You like cold water?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘It’s warmer when you’re in,’ I lied. He had his phone with him, which I suggested he lock in his rental car. When he returned to the pool he took a bit more coaxing before finally lowering himself into the water.

  Jago was from Germany; he was tall and blond, and perhaps a bit self-satisfied. He was the regional director of an AIDS-awareness NGO, managing their Windhoek office, where he oversaw sub-Saharan education and prevention.

  His organisation was headquartered in Berlin, and partly funded my sister’s charity, the Benguela Trust. He was in town to see her, and she’d invited me for dinner the previous night. The meal interrupted my work but I happily fulfilled my brotherly duties because I knew her food would be good – it always is – and because I suspected her of trying to set me up with him. Lucia knew me better than to suggest outright that I might like him.

  Initially he’d treated the meal as if it was an extension of their meeting: ‘We can only bring change to Namibia if we focus on unsexy infrastructure projects,’ he said after we’d shaken hands and I asked vaguely about his work. ‘I know this British charity whose donors want to watch happy little films about helping children to read. The donors don’t care about infrastructure. They aren’t interested in giving money to build highways between African cities they’ve never heard of. Books are everything that’s wrong with foreign aid. We should have a slogan: Books Are Bullshit. “Why are you still crying? Why are you still hungry? I gave you a book. Be quiet and read! Stop complaining!” You see the problem with a fucking book? But happy little films about roads and railways don’t sell. No, if someone in London wants to see a road then they look out their window. Please tell me you don’t work for a charity?’

  Somewhat taken aback by this salvo, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with his abrupt question. ‘No, I don’t work for a charity,’ I said, ‘but I am guilty of making happy little films.’ My remark caused him to smile, and he looked at me with interest.

  After supper Lucia suggested that we make ourselves comfortable in the lounge, where Jago lost no time rifling through her record collection. When at last he came to the settee I’d almost finished rolling my first joint. Without looking up, I asked where he was from.

  ‘I was born in Berlin,’ he said. ‘My favourite place on earth.’

  ‘You have a favourite place on earth? Do you have a favourite colour?’ I shot him a look to show that I was joking.

  ‘It’s better than this town,’ he said.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘This place is so ugly. I’ll take you to Berlin and show you real beauty.’

  I lit the spliff. ‘Deal.’

  As the three of us became increasingly goofed on weed, Jago kept repeating that Lüderitz was a dump, until I told him about Shark Island just to shut him up. I said that the tidal pool was my favourite place in the world as I reached for the almost burnt-down joint he held between his lips. I let my thumb and forefinger rest on his soft skin as he inhaled, and after I’d taken a few quick puffs of my own I announced: ‘And you’ll meet me there tomorrow.’

  Jago was struggling to breathe and tread water at the same time because of the cold. Also, he wasn’t a very good swimmer.

  ‘It’s better if you try to relax,’ I said. ‘You’ll feel warmer if you keep your chest under the surface.’

  ‘This wind drives me fucking crazy.’

  To distract him from the south-westerly ruffling the water I suggested we swim to the wall.

  With our elbows resting on the cold brick that separated us from the Atlantic Ocean, our legs stretching back in the p
ool behind us, I couldn’t keep my eyes off his tattoos. The water blackened the marks as if they’d just been painted on his skin with a thick calligraphy brush.

  ‘Touch them,’ he said when he saw me looking.

  ‘No, I’m fine.’ Wishing that I’d smoked some weed on my walk down here, I returned my attention to the waves breaking over the far corner. I told him somewhat nervously that I’d been in the middle of that chaos before he arrived.

  Our only company was a pod of bottlenose dolphins, their dorsal fins cutting the water close to the sea wall, snorting as they exhaled. They were on their way to join the ocean’s heavy traffic, the great whites and the whales, in the icy current that flows from the Antarctic along the Namibian coast to the equator.

  Jago moved towards me to ask about the barren land lying west of us. I explained about the distant lighthouse, how its beam swung around like a giant clock.

  ‘You should be a tour guide,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, I like it.’ He clearly felt bad about his remark because he began estimating how much I’d make if I charged tourists ten dollars each. After his sums he said, ‘So you always swim in this icebox?’

  ‘Every day.’

  ‘Hot desert next to freezing water.’ He stared at me, as if reluctant to look away, before turning his attention to the town behind me so that his back was to the ocean. ‘This place has such a weird sensation. The houses are watching me.’

  I preferred the waves but glanced over my shoulder at the buildings on this side of the Diamantberg, their windows reflecting the late-afternoon light back out to sea. Even the rock glistened. At night, when I was in bed, I’d sense the granite amphitheatre protecting me from whatever might come rushing at the town.

  By now the sun had burnt across most of the Atlantic and was lingering behind the dense air near the horizon, tourists in the campground barbecuing meat on their braais as I wondered if he found me attractive. The sun flattened into an oval, its rays illuminating the deep water so that the sea turned green, while the high clouds shone red and purple. Those closest to the waves glowed yellow.

  In the brief twilight that followed there was gooseflesh on Jago’s neck. I didn’t want him to get out the water, so when at last the lighthouse shone across the bay I said, ‘Stay and watch. Told you it’s like clockwork.’

  ‘Do I make you uncomfortable?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘why do you say that?’

  ‘You move away from me.’

  I took his arm and kissed him, his soft goatee tickling my chin. I’d ached to do that last night.

  He licked his lips. ‘You taste like the sea. Like a nix. Half man, half fish?’

  Angra Point and the ocean beyond it darkened, and he offered to drive me to my sister’s. Without answering, I let go of the wall and allowed myself to drift under the surface until my feet found the deep sand. He sank after me.

  His muscles were hard and I remembered his tattoos. I slipped a hand into his Speedo.

  Before I could stop him, he’d pulled off my trunks.

  I kicked up to the surface after him, to the tourists talking loudly in the campsite, but failed to stop him throwing my cossie at the perimeter wall, near our clothes. I shouted at him to fetch it but he ducked under. He was laughing when he resurfaced and I chased after him, easily catching up for another kiss.

  We skinny-dipped in the black water until it became too cold to bear.

  I made Jago drive past the town’s prettiest buildings. His remarks that Lucia and I lived in an ugly one-horse town – a kuhdorf – had stung me, and I was determined, in my giddy state, to change his mind.

  He was familiar with Windhoek’s architecture, but I hoped to show him how I saw the angular buildings with oriel windows and onion-dome flourishes and steep, decorated gables. How talcy desert sand, as fine as moon dust, coats the roofs designed for snow, not heat.

  We stopped outside my home, the middle in a row of five houses each painted a different colour, overlooking the port. The yellow cottage on the far corner was unoccupied, as was the green one next to it. Then mine – blue – followed by an orange place that was for sale. A blind man lived alone in the red one on the other corner. He’d wait all day at his front gate, listening for passers-by who might guide him to town. He knew his way around Lüderitz well enough – I’d seen him walking alone – but if a good Samaritan offered to help, the man would cling to the stranger’s arm, perhaps his only chance of being close to another person.

  All of the properties were dark. No vehicles parked out front. (We’d turned the corner and ours was the only car on my road.)

  ‘I was born here,’ I explained, but left unsaid how my parents died eight years after that.

  The wind was stronger now.

  ‘This is my third visit to Lüderitz,’ Jago said, ‘and I’ve never really looked at the buildings.’ He conceded that the town was pretty but he couldn’t imagine living here. Even Namibia’s capital, where he was based, felt too isolated. ‘I’m a big-city boy. How many people are in this town?’

  ‘The local population? I have no idea. Twenty thousand?’

  ‘It can’t be twenty.’

  ‘Fifteen?’ I didn’t want this to become our conversation. I needed him to tell me about himself, so that we might continue what we’d started in the water.

  ‘And you’re the only gay one?’ he said.

  I kissed him. ‘Sometimes it feels that way.’ His hair was still damp.

  ‘I can understand why you left, but why did you come back?’

  ‘My aunt’s old house was standing empty so I thought I may as well live in it. When I’m not on location, all I need is electricity and a table. Besides, five years in Jo’burg is enough for one lifetime.’

  Jago explained that he hadn’t considered settling down until his mid-thirties because he’d been having too much of a good time in Berlin. But now he worried that he’d left finding a boyfriend until too late because all the eligible bachelors he’d hung out with had shacked up with men of their own.

  From the way he spoke – ‘But if I’m in the mood I can always get fun. We had fun tonight, yes?’ – I could tell that he didn’t see me as a potential mate. I’d been enjoying myself, but hearing him dismiss me so casually engulfed me in an unexpected wave of regret.

  So when he said, ‘Come back to my hotel,’ I said, ‘More fun?’

  ‘Yes,’ was his reply.

  ‘I can’t.’ It was up to me to interrupt the long silence that followed: ‘I’m working tonight. I’m late as it is.’ And because I didn’t want them to be my last words to him, I added, ‘Meet me at the pool tomorrow.’

  ‘You want me to freeze my balls off again?’

  ‘It’s my favourite place in the world, Jago. I’ll be there, first thing, if you change your mind.’

  —————

  Rupertine was in the kitchen cutting gingerbread cookies from an oval she’d rolled onto the countertop. She said, ‘You’re late,’ without looking at me. Her spatula scooped the men and women onto a baking tray.

  As soon as the batch was safely in the oven, she began mixing a syrupy dough for spiced buns. She was in a hurry because she would have to bag the biscuits when they came out the oven for me to deliver to the tuisnywerheid before the shop closed.

  She’d worked for my aunt for as long as I could remember and had officially retired from housework, but would help me keep the place clean, ironing my shirts if she had time, in exchange for the use of my kitchen as her bakery. Although she seemed to be permanently annoyed with me, she never got angry. The same wasn’t true of her relationship with my aunt. When I was a kid Rupertine once told me she was descended from a Herero family who’d lived up near Windhoek. My aunt accused her of speaking rubbish because the Herero had never travelled as far south as Lüderitz. Rupertine spent the rest of the week slamming cupboard doors.

  She glanced at her watch, and then at me. ‘Your cake is waiting. My biscuits come out in ten m
inutes. Don’t be late.’

  I showered the salt off my body. I dressed in the clothes Rupertine had left on my bed before I went to unlock my bakkie’s passenger door. After giving the seat a quick wipe I returned for the wedding cake.

  Just before my aunt died, she converted my sister’s old bedroom into Rupertine’s pantry by replacing the door with a sturdy metal one that tended to scrape the concrete floor, and by affixing iron bars to the window.

  Rupertine’s cake was on its own shelf above the baking powder, vanilla essence and food colouring. Tiny white balls embedded in the fondant icing created strings of pearls connecting delicately piped bows. A garland of sugar rosebuds crowned the top tier. I called Rupertine to help me navigate the pantry’s freestanding shelves as I carried the delicate cargo to my bakkie.

  The cake was for Chesley Archipelago and his fiancée Zenaid. My sister had introduced me to Cousin Chesley at my aunt’s funeral. Although his mother was our mom’s younger sister, she’d moved to the Cape long before we were born and Lucia and I only ever called her ‘Mrs Archipelago’. To complicate matters, Mrs Archipelago was a retired social worker who ran a local massage parlour that relied on my sister’s charity to fund its sexual-health programme.

  Lucia had never said outright that she resented our blood relative for not offering to look after us when our parents died, but I suspected as much. Personally, I was relieved to have escaped her.

  But family drama aside, Chesley had taken over as my sister’s lawyer, and she’d told him I filmed weddings; he’d said he wanted to meet me, although preferably under less sombre circumstances than the occasion of my aunt’s funeral. He was friendly, and mentioned that his law firm might need a cameraman for witness testimonies. I’d asked for more details but he’d only say that nothing was decided. Over sandwiches at my sister’s place, I was sure to tell him how much I enjoyed filming weddings after he told me about his recent move from the Cape. His bride-to-be had managed a boutique travel agency in Cape Town, but now that they’d both relocated to Lüderitz she’d become a full-time wedding planner.