At the Edge of the Desert Read online

  A fishing boat rode the swell below the white air. Three gulls, wings outstretched, caught a low wind blowing over the Diamantberg. The breeze pushed the fog upwards, above the birds, into the churning sky. By lunchtime these misleading clouds might dissipate, without a drop of rain, to reveal a clear day, but for the moment they threatened a catastrophic storm.

  In the middle of the bay was a pontoon carrying the tiny figure of a man. He peered over its edge, causing the platform to dip erratically and reveal buoyant ten-gallon drums, until he crouched low to level it out again. As soon as he could stand upright, he dropped a parcel into the water and called a fisherman on the nearby ship to fetch him.

  The skipper manoeuvred alongside and helped the man aboard. The boat came towards me, cutting its engine and dropping anchor near the shore. Both men motioned for me to cover my ears as an unseen speaker emitted a high-pitched screech.

  Birds swooped to investigate.

  The part of the bay where the raft rocked from side to side exploded in white spray. Seawater stung my face as a shock wave ripped past. This was followed by a quick, thundering bang that almost lifted me off my feet.

  A white cloud rose up from the water and the wind caught it. Both men gestured to me again, fingers returning to ears, in time for a second blast. Louder than the first. It punched my chest and knocked me to the stone.

  No sound.

  Complete and utter silence – as if the planet had blown apart – until the lurching gulls shrieked and the seals joined the protests from across the bay. All of them struggling to escape the loud water.

  I got up in time to witness circles radiating from the detonation platform that appeared to have sustained no damage. My hand bled from where it must have grazed a rock.

  The boat began its slow return to the float as the ocean restored itself.

  I’d wasted too much time on Shark Island so I began my trek homeward into a wind that carried grit from the desert. Just before I came to the pool, the two women, the Europeans, waved at me. They were studying the island’s memorials that commemorate German soldiers killed in skirmishes with local tribes.

  The one photographing the stone inscriptions called me over: Did I know anything about these monuments?

  ‘Who were these people?’ she pressed.

  ‘I think they died in the war,’ I said, shielding my eyes from the strengthening gusts. I wasn’t the best person to ask about local history. I vaguely remembered hearing that to gain control of the colony, the Germans set up an internment facility, or possibly a hospital, on Shark Island in the early 1900s.

  ‘One hundred and sixty-seven men’ – she read out loud – ‘ninety-seven women, sixty-six children. They’re not soldiers?’

  ‘The Spanish flu?’ I suggested because I had nothing better to offer.

  Displeased, she turned away from me. I resumed my trek up the Diamantberg that brought me to Lübecker Street.

  There were missed calls on my phone. Messages from Jago, who’d been delayed, who apologised for cancelling. I rang and told his voicemail I was home. But he was flying back to Windhoek today, and because the next flight out of Lüderitz wasn’t for a week, he wouldn’t have time to see me.

  My wedding edit was slow and difficult. An uncomfortable realisation that I’d almost filmed tyres crushing the boy’s legs on their inevitable path to his head wouldn’t leave me. I tried not thinking about it. I tolerated it as best I could until I had to walk away from my desk. I smoked a joint and drank sweet tea on the veranda.

  When I resolved to go to my room, it was to the safety of my prison documentary. To the familiar interviews of men who’d spent most of their lives ‘inside’.

  A few months before I left Jo’burg, I borrowed money from my sister to rent a room from a private security firm. I also paid the company for protection – a panic button around my neck to summon armed guards – and for transporting ex-cons from a reoffender charity to my makeshift studio. And that was how I came to set up my tripod in an empty corner on the top floor of their office block. There wasn’t much space up there because I shared the storage room with the company’s old files and surplus riot gear, but I managed. Thankfully it was free of background noises that might cause sound problems during the edit.

  I taped electric cables to concrete. Blacked-out windows with vinyl. Pointed a light-panel at my interview stool and pegged colour gels to a rented 2 000-watt blonde and an 800-watt redhead that had me sweating by lunchtime, bouncing their halogen glare off the walls to film murderers and rapists in a warm diffuse glow.

  All of this awaited me in my bedroom, all of it more appealing than Chesley and the boy on his bike.

  —————

  My brother-in-law built Twin Palms – his desert-modern flat-roof replica of Frank Sinatra’s old pad – to shelter under the lee of the Diamantberg. Shane hoisted a new Stars and Stripes up the flagpole the week he drowned; now, after seven years of battling the wind, the flag was torn.

  Rodriguez’s ‘Sugar Man’ played on the hi-fi even though my sister knew I loathed the tune. She’d evidently been on the lookout for me, and had decided to serenade my late arrival with something to irritate me. There was no sign of her in the lounge or in the kitchen so I took the needle off the record, replying to her shout of ‘No!’ from outside with my ‘Yes!’

  Twin Palms was Shane’s cathedral of cool. Evidence for this hung on the wall behind his record collection: Lana Turner in furs, Sammy Davis Jr and Ava Gardner on the Vegas Strip, an eight-by-ten glossy of Shirley MacLaine hamming it up with the Pack, all of them, including MacLaine, in tuxedos. And a printed history of the ’47 Palm Springs property, which Shane read to me with an American accent, framed alongside a painting of Ol’ Blue Eyes forever striding up the drive.

  My brother-in-law did his homework. He chose carpets to match a photo shoot of the original house as best he could, along with the paint and wood panelling, the oak bunk-beds, the pink tiles in the master bathroom, the imported square basin and palm-frond wallpaper for the guest cabanas in the backyard. He even carved a coffee table out of a baobab cross-section.

  When Shane first showed me his architect’s drawings he’d said, ‘This is the place Sinatra would have built if he’d been a Jo’burg boytjie.’ I’d suggested, based on those blueprints, it would cost a lot of monica – South African gay slang for money. Without skipping a beat, Shane replied, ‘This’ll cost monica lewinsky’ – the surname presumably adding a few extra zeros to whatever sum I’d thought of. And he wasn’t wrong: Twin Palms almost bankrupted him. Every cent he made from diamond-diving offshore went into this place, and every moment on dry land was spent building it. Stress and exhaustion made him careless.

  All things considered, I had a difficult relationship with the house, and not only because of Shane’s death. He’d been so enthusiastic about what he was trying to achieve that I felt obliged to pretend that his imitation was as good as the real thing, whereas its dimensions always felt wrong to me. The kitchen was cramped and the bedrooms too big. But with Shane gone, I’d moved in for a while to help my sister – this was before I relocated to Jo’burg – and grew to love the place.

  Tonight I found my sister sweeping the tiles around her empty swimming pool that was shaped like a grand piano. (Shane cut slots into the walkway’s roof to cast piano-key shadows upon the shallow end.) The pool had never been filled.

  My sister’s face relaxed when she smiled.

  ‘You look smart,’ she said after we’d kissed. ‘I like your jacket. But your hair’s wet and you’re shivering.’

  ‘I’ve just been for a swim.’

  ‘But it’s hell cold.’

  Lights were burning in the guesthouse at the end of the yard. (Shane completed one cabana. The other five never got doors or windows of their own.) I could hear faint voices out there but the wind blew the argument or the laughter away. Before I could ask, my sister said, ‘They’ll join us in a few minutes.’

  ‘I didn’t know you
were inviting people tonight.’

  ‘Amanda and Will flew in this morning. It was a hell of a trip – London, Windhoek, Windhoek, here – so I told them to spend the night because I haven’t seen them for a while. And I’ve been wanting you to meet Will. Now come inside so you don’t catch a cold.’

  I hung my wet things in the bathroom where she found me a fresh towel. As I took it she said, ‘You’ve cut your hand.’

  ‘Ja, early this morning. On the rocks. I swam again tonight, so the sea’s disinfected it.’

  ‘You need to take care of yourself, Henry.’ She brought cotton wool and mercurochrome from the medicine cabinet, and began cleaning my wound. I helped her cover it with a plaster before she dried my hair so that I wouldn’t get my hand wet. When she was done, I gave her the book, still wrapped in plastic, I’d been carrying with me. It was an Everyman’s Library edition, and my last Jo’burg purchase.

  ‘You always remember,’ she said. She smiled at the spine, caressing the embossed title with her thumb before leading me to the spare bedroom, to Shane’s old office, with its floor-to-ceiling bookcase. A shelf held a dozen mauve-and-black Everymans. All the others were empty.

  We sniffed the new book’s unread pages because their smell reminded us of Shane, who’d have turned thirty-nine today. He’d wanted to fill his library before retiring at forty. After making space for the book we’d never open again, I found myself wanting to share my memories of Shane with my sister, every recollection I had. But as I attempted to speak I sensed they were words she didn’t want to hear. Right now I needed her close to me, but I was struck by how withdrawn she became.

  So I contemplated the new addition to the shelf until my sister, looking tired again, said she’d best go to the kitchen to prepare tonight’s food. I made myself comfortable in the lounge, reflecting on our inability to communicate with almost as much sadness as I felt for my dead friend.

  My sister brought me a glass of wine before she chose another record.

  With ‘Sinnerman’ on the player, I said, ‘That’s more like it.’ The bass guitar joined the piano and Nina Simone sang. I invited my sister to join me on the settee, clinking my glass against hers, while I silently toasted Shane on his birthday. She wanted to know about my documentary, and after a brief update I mentioned Chesley’s wedding, which my sister purposely never attended, and his near-accident. I ended by asking if she’d heard from Jago.

  She answered generally: ‘He reckons his foreign aid might be drying up. So that’s stressing me.’

  ‘Maybe the funding won’t be as bad as he says. Or he’s only worrying about himself.’

  ‘You think so? No, he’s a good guy. But I suppose he does keep threatening to move back to Germany, so who knows?’ She was still waiting to hear if she might be eligible for additional EU money, or she’d have to make difficult choices next year.

  She gulped her wine, her face serious. ‘Do you need cash?’

  I assured her I had enough for the month. ‘Apart from Jago,’ I said, ‘how’s work?’

  She checked her watch with a sigh. ‘You know what it’s like. Some days it feels like we’re making a difference – so I suppose that’s good – but then I have a day like today when I want to lock up the office and, I don’t know, run away. Join the circus. Anything not to worry about domestic violence or poverty or HIV. But, you know, the people need me. And there’s Shane’s debts to pay if I want to hold on to Twin Palms. So, ja. I don’t know. Ek gaan maar aan.’

  As she poured more wine, I caught sight of my aunt’s school globe, the one where Indochina remains forever French, and Korea undivided, in the alcove above the fireplace. I went to take a closer look. ‘Where the hell did you find this?’

  ‘I normally keep it in the cabana but decided to take it out this morning,’ she said. ‘Didn’t want it to get damaged.’

  The old globe had taught me that west was good. I reminded Lucia how our aunt would put my finger on Kapstadt, on the southern tip of Africa, leaving me to decide which coastline – the eastern or the western seaboard – to follow north. If I chose correctly and selected a westerly route, my aunt said, ‘Sehr gut.’ I’d trace a path from Cape Town, following the thin black line separating the blue Atlantic Ocean, with its printed currents, from the pink land divided into provinces, up past the Orange River’s mouth, where I would begin to hesitate.

  ‘I’d have to wait for her nod,’ I said over my shoulder to my sister.

  ‘You were braver than me.’

  ‘It was the most terrifying feeling in the world, being the explorer.’

  ‘One wrong move and you’d die?’

  We’d watch me edging my finger up the sphere’s lune-shaped gore until I reached an unmarked part of southern Namibia where the desert met the sea, which our aunt assured us was home.

  ‘A Portuguese explorer named this harbour the Gulf of Saint Christopher,’ I said with my aunt’s German accent that succeeded in making Lucia giggle. It was a relief to see her happy again, and I returned to the settee to be close to her.

  ‘The Lord Almighty …’ Lucia prompted.

  ‘The Lord Almighty sent Herr Lüderitz, a German businessman in possession of a stronger moral character than the Portuguese braggadocio, to save this land from despair.’

  ‘Jesus, that woman,’ my sister said of the memory. ‘I loved her.’

  Without warning, she followed this with a punch to my shoulder.

  ‘You haven’t told me about your swim with him,’ she said. ‘Last night, you sneaky bliksem. That’s why you were asking if he’d been in touch. Jago’s very …’

  It was my turn to smile even though I stung from the want of seeing him today. ‘He must be in Windhoek by now.’

  ‘Henry. You sneaky— and you sit there with a straight face. What happened?’ She gave me another whack.

  ‘Ja, it was nice.’ She waited for more details but I didn’t want to admit that he and I hadn’t connected. ‘Maybe I’ll catch up with him when he’s back in Lüderitz.’

  ‘When I spoke to him this morning, he said he enjoyed the swim.’

  ‘Really?’

  I considered asking for his number, but she’d caught sight of her guests outside, and stood up, speaking quickly: ‘Please start the fire. I’m still marinating the crayfish. I’ve promised them a lekker Buchter braai.’

  Lucia introduced me to Will and Amanda, the four of us sheltering from the wind, as Will told me how much he’d been wanting to meet me. He was affable and close to my age; extremely tall, around six five, with a large head on a skinny frame resembling a praying mantis.

  ‘I finally get to meet the filmmaker,’ he said as he slapped my arm.

  I wasn’t sure if Amanda, his rather severe-looking wife, was about to frisk me or hug me, so we ended up doing both. She wore old-fashioned spectacles with close-cropped hair, and could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty years old.

  ‘I was just telling Amanda how lucky we are to live in such an interesting part of the world,’ Will said. He formed his words at the very front of his mouth to produce a clearer version of my own deep, dull English. ‘I mean, just look at those stars. Diamonds in the sky, don’t you think? Of course there’s the Yeats poem. For some reason I find myself thinking about Irish poetry tonight.’

  I shut my mouth when he laughed, head thrown back, revealing his surprisingly small, baby-like teeth. If his exuberance energised me, the mouth forming those beautiful sounds disturbed me.

  My sister excused herself – escaping to her kitchen, reassuring Amanda that she didn’t need help – and abandoned me to ask Will the first question that came into my head.

  ‘Investment banking,’ Amanda responded on her husband’s behalf.

  ‘I was a project manager,’ he clarified, ‘nothing as glamorous as a trader.’ He glanced suspiciously at the pool behind him, perhaps making sure he wasn’t about to step into it. ‘I have to say, this hole in the ground is a massive health-and-safety concern, especially at ni
ght. I mean, you almost fell in when we arrived, didn’t you, Amanda?’

  ‘It’s lovely to finally meet you,’ she said, ignoring her husband. ‘But why, oh why does it have to be so cold?’ She’d wrapped herself in a shawl and a scarf, which she pulled tightly.

  As much as I typically enjoyed meeting my sister’s friends, I’d have preferred having her all to myself tonight. I’d exhausted my weekly quota of charm and conversation on Jago and couldn’t think what else to say to the expectantly smiling couple before me.

  Amanda saved me the trouble: ‘You read law at university?’ She’d have quizzed Lucia about me.

  ‘No, architecture school.’

  ‘Architecture?’ Will said. ‘Good, something useful. My obsession with Elizabeth Barrett Browning resulted in a rather underwhelming PhD on Aurora Leigh.’

  I clarified that Shane, my brother-in-law, had been the lawyer.

  ‘You’re an architect?’ Amanda mused. ‘Well, this house is … interesting. Unusual.’ Narrowing her eyes, as if peering at me through a magnifying glass, she said, ‘You didn’t design it?’

  As a pinned moth, I could but shake my head: ‘No, neither of us did anything with our degrees. Only passed mine by the skin of my teeth.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Will said, ‘an ordinary. One should strive for firsts or ordinaries. Seconds are mediocre. An upper second is so vapid and bland that one might as well not have wasted one’s money. The degree equivalent of a white suburban heterosexual middle-class family.’

  I assumed that he’d received a first, which was why he spoke so confidently about grades. I’d have loved an upper second.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask when you think we’ll eat?’ Amanda said. ‘It’s just that I’ve not had a thing since breakfast before we landed in Windhoek.’

  ‘Soon,’ I promised. ‘I’m meant to be making the fire.’

  ‘Perhaps I ought to see if she needs help in there.’

  I gave up trying to reassure her that my sister preferred the kitchen to herself because the Brit kept nodding, all the while saying it was no bother, before heading inside.