At the Edge of the Desert Read online

  The argument was distracting the children as much as it was my sister and me, and they forgot my camera.

  ‘Is this how our story ends?’ Amanda said.

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘She tends to have a selective memory,’ my sister said while the Brits continued. ‘I wish she’d leave him alone.’

  I said, ‘Why doesn’t he leave her?’

  My sister shrugged.

  I pressed my point: ‘Why doesn’t he just tell her that it’s over?’

  ‘Until recently, his reason was money. They were civil until they sold their London place. Now I wish they’d just split everything in half so that we can all get on with our lives.’

  I decided to finish the lesson by showing the kids how to zoom and focus when it occurred to me that, apart from the recent excitement, the house was remarkably silent.

  ‘Have you seen Ben?’ I asked my sister, and she said she was about to look for him.

  ‘You stay here,’ I said. ‘I’ll go up.’ I called the boy’s name as I climbed the stairs. Not wanting to mess up the sand in the bedroom, I peeked in to see if Ben might be hiding in there.

  Just then I caught sight of Keanu bounding towards the house.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I said aloud as Keanu continued past without stopping.

  Back downstairs I told my sister that Ben must have slipped out. ‘He’s probably collecting stones.’

  The fog was heavy. Its glare hurt my eyes as I walked up the incline, calling Ben’s name. Ahead of me lay the mine manager’s house, the biggest residence here, where Amanda and Will had been arguing.

  My legs were soon burning and I was out of breath. If Ben wasn’t at the house, I’d continue down to the highway before doubling back to search the other properties. I called again but got no response.

  A burst echoed around me. And another: more like shattering glass than a gunshot.

  Will was in front of the house. He had Ben by the shoulders and was shaking the boy.

  Will kept shouting ‘Why did you break it?’ even as I attempted to grab him.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ I said. I elbowed Will towards the front steps. He stumbled, struggling to maintain his balance, as I pushed him further away. Right now I felt like I could annihilate him.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ he said to me. His demeanour stiffened: it was a face I hadn’t seen before. ‘This child broke a window.’

  Glass lay on the concrete steps.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ the boy said.

  ‘You saw him do it?’ I asked Will.

  ‘No,’ the boy repeated.

  Will began to answer but I cut him off: ‘Why was Keanu running away? What happened to him?’

  Further down the hill my sister called my name.

  ‘We’re OK,’ I yelled back. I crouched to see if Ben was hurt. He buried his face in my shoulder.

  ‘You’re in big trouble,’ Will told him.

  I cradled the boy’s head with my hands. ‘No, Will, you’re wrong. You’ll be in trouble for what you’ve done.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Grabbing him like that.’

  Keanu poked his head around the corner of the house. I asked what he’d been doing, but he wouldn’t respond and didn’t come any closer.

  Will stooped to pick up a desert rose. He held it out to me, saying, ‘He had this. His pocket’s full of them.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So what?’ he said. ‘He’s been throwing these fucking stones at the window.’

  Keanu interrupted but I spoke over him: ‘You need to calm down, Will.’

  ‘I need to calm down?’

  I whispered in Ben’s ear that he should go to my sister, but he shook his head. I reassured him that he’d be fine, and pointed the way.

  Amanda peered out of the broken window from inside the house. ‘That kid played you all right,’ she said as Ben set off. ‘He learnt a valuable lesson today.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘If you make like you’re going to cry, people feel sorry for you and you get away with murder. That lesson.’

  ‘He didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘Throwing rocks is acceptable?’ Will said. His fist tightened on the stone.

  ‘No, and neither is lashing out because you’re in the middle of an argument. The whole of Kolmans could hear every word you were saying. Don’t take your frustrations out on a child.’

  ‘He’s hardly a child,’ Amanda said.

  ‘Go ahead and treat each other like crap,’ I said, ‘that’s none of my business – but don’t do that to a child.’

  She hurried down the stairs not taking her eyes off me. Will tossed his stone aside so that he could take her hand. The rock hit the mine manager’s house, chipping the plaster to leave a grey scar on the wall. He kicked another in the direction of the highway. ‘I have every right to be angry,’ he said.

  —————

  ‘Does anyone in the 28s wear a real uniform?’

  Dollar tapped a finger to his forehead: ‘We all wear that uniform in here.’

  ‘But it doesn’t exist?’ I clarified. ‘Or is it real?’ He shook his head. ‘And every other rank in the 28s – the doctors, the captains and the others – each rank has its own secret uniform?’

  I repeated my question but he wouldn’t answer. He stared at the lens with the same dead eyes his victims must have seen. Eyes that told me he could beat me and bind me. That he would kill me if he wanted to.

  Dollar was refusing to communicate because he’d demanded more money – renegotiating his interview fee – but I wasn’t willing to discuss it.

  ‘And only a person of a certain rank can describe that rank’s uniform?’ I said.

  Nothing.

  I told him to answer out loud.

  Nothing.

  ‘The same applies to the other gangs?’

  Silence.

  Now it was my turn to stop speaking.

  ‘The same,’ he said at last.

  ‘What prevents someone from outside the 28s pretending they have a certain rank in your gang?’

  Contempt overrode reluctance: ‘How?’

  ‘A man transfers in from another prison. And that man tells you he was a 28 in the other prison, but no one in your local gang has ever met him before. How can you be certain that he is who he says he is?’

  ‘Who would tell him? Me?’

  I tried again: ‘What if he heard about your uniform from someone else?’

  ‘Then we kill that man who told him.’

  ‘Yes, but if this stranger managed to … I don’t know … discover your secrets. Couldn’t he pretend to be a member of the 28s?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re certain about that? I would think that for a clever man this might be possible. Someone good at noticing things other people don’t see.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘For a clever man, pretending might be easy.’

  Dollar spat on the floor. ‘That man is like the virus. He infiltrates the body and makes it sick. We kill that man.’

  I’d unclipped Dollar’s radio mic and was decoupling my camera from the tripod when he pulled off his T-shirt without me asking him to. He had well-defined muscles – firm biceps and thick arms. Until then, I’d have to tell the men to take off their tops so that I could film their tattoos, but he must have spoken to the others and had familiarised himself with my MO. He’d been asking about me.

  He flexed his triceps, arms held out from his honey-coloured torso, so that each hand appeared to be holding a heavy suitcase. His face reddening with effort. Watching this again made me smile, as it had in my studio. I’d kept the viewfinder snug against my face to stop him seeing my reaction. Cameras are an odd shield.

  I’d waited until he’d grown bored of preening, of posing like a bodybuilder, and only after he’d relaxed did I say I was ready to film him.

  Without warning he dropped his trousers. He wasn’t w
earing underwear and stood naked in front of me.

  ‘This?’ he’d said, his voice tinny because I’d taken away his personal mic.

  ‘Put them on,’ I said.

  His thick cock slapped against his stomach when he finally pulled up his trousers.

  None of the other men behaved this way. A few stripped down to their undies, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, but surprisingly, for a lot of them, undressing in front of my camera appeared to bring with it a sense of vulnerability. An uncertainty about what else I might ask of them.

  In my first interview I’d watched a brawny twenty-two-year-old, a tsotsi who’d push a screwdriver into my guts without thinking twice, become increasingly diminished as he shed his clothes. For once, someone other than a prison doctor or a guard or a cellmate was paying attention to his body. He’d moved away from me as if afraid I might touch him, and I had to keep reminding him not to put his hands between himself and my camera. Was I the only man to look at his skin and recognise in his inky reminders everything that was dear to him, everything worth remembering?

  —————

  My neighbour’s dog wouldn’t stop barking. The determined staccato worsened my already foul mood after a day in Kolmanskop. In order to escape the relentless sound, I drove around Lüderitz, and eventually found my way to Harmony, switching off my headlights as I approached the commune. I stopped a fair distance away from it on the other side of the quiet road. The ground-floor lights were burning, the generator like a manic heartbeat, even though it was past midnight. Everyone would be inside by now.

  My frustration wouldn’t subside, and was in all likelihood made worse by me not being able to talk to my sister about Will’s behaviour. There was far too much I wanted to tell her, and I risked uttering words I couldn’t unsay. Or perhaps my reticence, my ambivalence, arose out of my responsibility for encouraging Will’s fantasies, and his bad behaviour.

  He’d left me a voicemail that I’d deleted unheard. I presumed that he’d called to apologise, but there was a chance that he wanted to rationalise his behaviour towards Ben. Either way, I couldn’t deal with him right now.

  A light blinked on upstairs at the same time as two people slipped out the main door. Their faces revealed themselves in turn as their hands cupped the flame that met each cigarette, but were too far away for me to recognise. One glowing tip darted about. The other shone a few seconds before disappearing. I’d almost forgotten it was next to its companion’s hyperactive dot until it blazed from another drag. I lit my own blunt in my bakkie, drawing the sweet smoke into my lungs, perhaps keen to be out there with the two people.

  They checked their phones, the blue glow illuminating their chests and chins. Bright flame marked the start of their next cigarettes. I unlocked my phone and scrolled to Jago’s details. It was too late to call him, so I wrote: ‘Hi, I’m sorry I missed you. I’m in Windhoek next week and wanted to know if you’re around? Would be good to see you. Henry.’ My thumb hesitated over the ‘x’ to add a kiss, but decided against it. I deleted the message instead.

  As the three of us smoked together, I longed to ask their advice about Jago. I still hadn’t replied to the messages he’d sent me in Windhoek. I wouldn’t mind seeing him on my next trip; but, if I was honest, I felt no connection with him. He was as unreal as Dollar was on my computer screen: someone liable to forget I existed. Quinty, on the other hand, was close by. He might even be in his workshop.

  A rectangle of light pierced the wall behind the smokers, and my distant companions’ cigarettes became fireworks hitting the ground. The two people went inside Harmony to complete whatever tasks they’d been dodging, the door shutting behind them, as my mind turned to the Australian.

  Quinty’s place was lit up when I drove past, so I pulled over and called the number on his ‘To Let’ sign.

  ‘Here for a nightcap?’ he said on opening his gate. ‘It’s nice and warm in my house.’

  He told me to make myself comfortable on the settee while he found us something to drink in the kitchen. I asked if I could interview him about his explosions. Perhaps not the best subject for tonight, but potentially useful for gauging his interest in me.

  ‘Sure, if you want,’ he said as he came out with a bottle of Cape Velvet and two liqueur glasses. ‘This is a bit camp, I know, but a lot better than coffee.’

  His arm brushed mine as he sat next to me, and neither of us moved away. After a sweet refill, he guided my hand to his chest to show me how to caress his nipples with my fingertips. I shifted closer to him. We kissed, and his lips were soft and warm. His shallow breaths tickled my cheek.

  He said, ‘I should warn you that I’m in the middle of a messy divorce, so I’m still technically married. It’s complicated, but I thought you ought to know.’

  His body looked even better than it did under his clothes.

  I sucked him, enjoying him stiffening in my mouth, while he played with my dick.

  The sensation of a cock entering my arse is intensely pleasurable. It’s by far the best thing about sex, but as he slipped himself inside me – all the time watching my reaction – I felt myself tense and told him to pull out.

  ‘Breathe,’ he soothed. ‘Deep breaths.’

  He waited for me to relax before easing himself in all the way, and waited again for me to confirm that I was ready for him to fuck me.

  Afterwards he knelt beside me and dipped the tip of his soft cock into the pool of his semen that filled my belly button. He’d also shot on the duvet, and there were cold wet patches all around us. We wiped ourselves and the bed with an old towel as best we could before half-limping, half-stumbling to the shower where Quinty’s Australian soap smelt of eucalyptus. We washed each other, pausing to free gelatinous bits of cum from our pubic hair with our fingernails.

  —————

  On my trek north to Windhoek, I distracted myself with the nub of an idea that involved comparing my ex-cons to the gay men in Paris is Burning. Some of the African Americans and Latinos competing in New York City drag balls vogued in double-breasted business suits – serving ‘executive realness’ – in imitation of straight white businessmen.

  My theory was that my ex-cons might be serving ‘military realness’ because their imaginary uniforms were reminiscent of British infantrymen who fought in the South African wars. I toyed with ways of linking my ex-prisoners’ appropriated costumes to those of the marginalised, gay New Yorkers.

  Unfortunately, as was the case during my first visit to Windhoek, despite me filming interviews every day, a week passed without any family memories worth recording. I worried that Chesley’s project might be a waste of time. Desperate, I dialled Jago to see if he was around, but I heard the international ringtone and ended the call.

  On the Monday I found myself navigating dirt roads outside Grootfontein, five hours north of Windhoek, attempting to find a farmhouse where a labourer was meant to be waiting for me.

  Behind a row of black poplars was the house I’d been searching for, and with it a small, sinewy man leaning against the wire fence that separated the scrub-land from three mulched rose beds. I could barely hear Zacharias telling me his name because the hot air was shrill with beetles. But with his help, we set off for his kraal.

  ‘How big is this farm?’ I asked, because it took us thirty minutes to reach the circle of corrugated-iron shacks, built on a parcel of land, where he lived with his family.

  ‘Thirty thousand hectares.’

  Unlike the main farmhouse, there were no shrieking insects at this settlement, but there were three yapping braks. Zacharias shouted at the dogs to voetsak. When they didn’t obey he pretended to kick the nearest one and they all gapped it.

  We found his grandmother asleep in her room. It held her bed and a cupboard, her clothes neatly folded on the shelves, some wrapped in plastic shopping packets, along with a small collection of glass bottles. He called her name from the doorway, but she didn’t respond. One of the dogs slipped past me
and leapt onto the bed, waking the old woman before Zacharias could throw the animal out. I apologised as Zacharias pulled the door shut behind us. He introduced me to his grandmother as we helped her up. Her hands were soft and cold. She’d been reading her Bible, she said.

  Back outside I searched for the best spot to set up my equipment – away from the fierce sun – while Ouma Gendredi prepared herself in her room. Meanwhile Zacharias corralled the animals into one of the shacks and yelled at them to shut up. Thankfully there was no wind, and after a while the dogs settled down. I put a wooden stool in the shade behind the largest hut, the sun at my back, so that the light would fall on Ouma Gendredi’s face. I knew which lens to use today.

  Ouma Gendredi wore a traditional Victorian-style dress. The heavy fabric cinched her waist; it trailed along the dry soil with soft sighs as she came towards me. The cloth was well cared-for, and discreetly mended. On her head was a ‘cow-horn’: a tube-shaped headdress made out of fabric-covered newspaper and secured with a pin. The pin’s flat end was as shiny as a silver coin.

  She made herself comfortable on the stool, and I attached my radio mic to her scarf with her grandson’s help before asking her to keep looking at my camera lens. I explained that I wanted to learn about her grandmother. Zacharias began reminding her of the lawsuit against the Germans, which she remembered, so she waved his explanation away. Instead she had him fetch a photograph from her room. He returned with a black-and-white picture of her mother.

  As I was happy with my sound, I squatted level with Ouma Gendredi and asked about her grandmother who’d survived the German concentration camp.

  ‘My grandmother made my mother remember these words,’ she said as she held the photo alongside her face for my camera to see. ‘My grandmother told my mother everything that happened to our people.’

  She switched from Afrikaans to Otjiherero, her native tongue, which Zacharias began translating into Afrikaans and the occasional bit of German (with some help from Ouma Gendredi). I found him a second mic, and kept reminding him not to interrupt while Ouma Gendredi intoned her ancestor’s words.

  ‘The white men lay dead when the fighting stopped. Our ancestors gave us that first victory. But those same ancestors celebrated and drank too much beer. They fell asleep. And then in the next battle there were more white soldiers up in the hills. We begged our ancestors for another victory, but the white soldiers killed our men. We pleaded with those ancestors to rescue us, to guide us to food and water, but they were asleep. The next day we prayed, but the ancestors were still dreaming. On the third day, we were too weak to wait. We knew we must walk to the town because the white people had food and water. Some of us had never seen that town before.