The Reactive Read online

Ruan pulls out a half-smoked cigarette from his pocket and lights it with a broken matchstick. Then he cups a hand over the flame and waves the match out before chucking it into the garden. I watch him sigh and drop his shoulders before taking a drag.

  Man, he says, breathing out smoke. When I saw that money coming in, I just started shaking. I was at my place, right? And I had to stop typing for a while. I mean, Jesus, Nathi. He pauses and looks up the road. When’s the new shipment coming in?

  In a day or two, I say.

  Ruan nods. Of course I told the client it was short notice, he says. The guy said it was fine, you know, that today was just a meeting between friends. Can you believe that? He called us friends.

  Ruan’s cheeks pull inward as he drags on his cigarette, his fingers pinching the sponge as thin as an envelope. I watch the carcinogens leaking out of his body.

  I guess we’ve all tried to pack in the filters. We even came close last year, when we decided to quit nicotine and move out of the city entirely. Our plan was to relocate with our pill money to the Eastern Cape, where we’d harvest khat near the Kei River and hike the valley gorge that curves like a wide vein between Bolo and Cathcart. We didn’t plan for long: before the end of the month, we heard reports of how a van, loaded with a boxful of stems, was stopped with bullets on its way to King William’s Town. The urge died in us after that.

  Ruan blows out another gray fog from his insides. He passes me the cigarette and I take a short pull, blowing smoke through my nose and through the fence.

  The two of us stand in silence as the wind fusses the trees around West Ridge, its force snapping off the winter leaves and blanketing the curb in brown and orange patterns. We watch them scrub without noise against the rutted tar.

  Then Ruan breaks through our silence.

  This ugly description, he says.

  I listen. I flick my cigarette on the tar and turn to face him.

  Do you think it’s code for something?

  Maybe, I say. I don’t know. It could be a word for dangerous.

  Scars, Ruan says.

  Then we fall into more silence.

  I turn and hook my fingers on the mesh fence, hanging my weight on the sagging wire. I used to cross my eyes on fences like this when I was a child, a private trick that could make the holes in the squares leap out like holograms, but when I try it now, the optical illusion hurts my eyes. I uncross them and watch as the wind pushes against a green cardboard box, turning it over between the bins in the far corner of the parking lot. It knocks over a brown beer bottle, a quart balanced against the wall, and causes it to spew out frothy dregs, the foam washing across a fading parking line.

  Cissie says all this silence in Newlands isn’t a coincidence, that her whole neighborhood’s haunted. The suburb’s built on a grave site, she says, the plot of a man called Helperus Van Lier: an eighteenth-century evangelist who lived in the Dutch Cape Colony. Cissie says piety has the ability to flow inside tap water, and that even plant life isn’t safe from Calvinist ghosts. This is the reason behind the stillness, she tells us, or at least why she owns a water filter.

  There’s something else I didn’t show you, Ruan says.

  I turn around.

  I didn’t tell you and Cissie this, but the client sent me copies of our ID’s. He attached them in that email I sent you with our names and jobs on it, remember, but you know how Cissie’s phone is. I had to take the jpegs off the MMS. Here, he says. Take a look at it.

  I take his phone and start browsing through his images. It’s true. We come up one after the other. The man did all three of our ID’s in color.

  Here’s Ruan, here’s Cecelia, and here I am.

  Here’s Russell, here’s Evans, and here’s Mda.

  Ruan looks at me with his face pulled back in a wince, a form of apology. I look back down at the phone again.

  Then up.

  The thing is, he says.

  I hand him his phone back. He slides it into his pocket.

  The thing is, he says, it doesn’t seem like we have much of a choice here. We have this guy’s money, and we know that he’s dangerous. He’s not a cop, but he’s got the reach of one. We know that he’s free of the law, but we’re not sure he’s outside of it.

  I nod. It isn’t hard to see his point. By giving us his money, the client has us bound.

  Of course, there can’t be any police for us, either, Ruan says.

  I nod again.

  Look, Nathi, he says, I can’t just walk into the bank and tell them to reverse the transaction, can I? I mean, we’re lucky having that much money in the account hasn’t raised any suspicion to begin with. Now what if I go in there and start tampering with it? Then what? That’s a sure way of getting people to ask me things I have no answers for. The only option we have is to meet him.

  He’s right. I tell him I agree. Then I let another moment pass before I say I quit my job.

  Ruan turns around. You quit?

  I walked out before cashing up.

  He takes a moment to look up the street. Maybe you’ll find another one, he says.

  I sigh. I guess he’s trying to encourage me. Which is good. I could use more of that.

  Jesus, Ruan says then. I did the same thing.

  I turn to him, surprised. He falls back on the fence and knits his fingers together. Ruan stretches his arms out to crack the knuckles on each hand, and I notice an expression I’ve never seen on his face before. It reminds me of a game-show contestant I once saw as a child on a show called Zama Zama. The contestant, a man from the rural Eastern Cape, had directed a similar smile at the host, Nomsa Nene, at the crowd, and then finally at his family, after choosing the wrong key for the grand prize.

  It was a shitty job, I say to him. When you told us about the money, I don’t know. I just took my cap off and left. The strangest thing was that I hadn’t even decided about accepting it. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

  Ruan nods. I felt the same way about the firm, he says.

  We go quiet over another cigarette. Ruan smokes it down to the filter and throws it away. Then he lights another one and I take it from him when he’s done.

  It’s a favor, you know? To both myself and my uncle. He even spits, now, whenever he sees me in the office parking lot.

  I nod. Ruan’s told us this story before.

  The company he works for lies in an old office park in Pinelands. Their building, one of fifty five-story units that face out to Ndabeni, an industrial suburb north of Maitland, came as a last resort to him. Early on, when Ruan started applying for posts as an assistant network administrator, he ruined his CV by losing three jobs in succession. The reason for dismissal was a slew of unforeseen panic attacks: from the copy machine to the kitchen area, he could be found curled up, or fainting on carpet tiles or buffed lino. Even though he always went back to work a week later with an apology, and sometimes a note from a doctor he’d paid to say it was epilepsy, he was always fired. Over the phone, even as his former employers expressed their sympathy and good wishes, they described him as too great a liability to keep on a payroll, and suggested he seek out a program for special care.

  For a while, it felt as if there had been no options left open to him, and then—after a series of emails, all dispatched with great reluctance, but pushed by the pressure of an increasing interest rate—his uncle relented and put him on a conditional intern’s contract. His uncle’s oldest son had recently relocated to the UK, and this freed up the flat in Sea Point, where Ruan was to stay, paying rent into his uncle’s account. This is what led to his present situation. Ruan’s probation period extended itself to more than four years, and even though he renews his contract every twelve months, there’s never any mention of a pay increase. This is how he still gives a lot of what he earns to his uncle and the bank.

  I squash the cigarette ember with my toe and kick it towards the gutter. It rolls in a light breeze, stopping just shy of the pavement’s lip.

  I don’t know if I thought of
myself as having already taken the money, Ruan says. I just saw it there, when that SMS came, and I thought other things could happen.

  I move away from the fence and settle myself on the edge of the pavement. Ruan doesn’t follow, and for a while the two of us speak without facing each other. Two cars drive past us and after they’ve gone, I notice a figure standing in the house opposite. I can’t tell whether it’s a man or a woman, but I can see them looking out at us through a veil of curtain lace. Eventually, when it seems like our eyes have met and locked for a long time, the figure takes a step back and draws the curtain closed between us. I lean back and feel the tar and pebbles digging into my palms.

  Then I take a breath and decide to tell Ruan what I’m thinking.

  The two of us, I say, we’ve already accepted the money from the client.

  Ruan tells me that he knows we have. He sits down on the pavement next to me and kicks a pebble into the road. He says he hopes Cissie has, too.

  It takes Cecelia another half an hour to return. The three of us take the lift to her flat, and as we do, she doesn’t speak to me or Ruan.

  Cissie walks into her kitchen and starts rifling through the cabinets. Then she crouches and opens the drawers beside the stove.

  I’m looking for the Industrial, she says. In case anyone’s interested.

  Ruan and I take our seats on the living-room floor in silence, facing each other from the opposite ends of her coffee table.

  My aunt died today, Cissie says. It happened just over an hour ago.

  She dips her head back behind the counter, rifling through more cabinets. Then she opens a coffee tin and, finding it empty, lets it roll out of the kitchen.

  It’s weird, she says. First, we’re picking twigs. Then I take the train and she’s dead.

  Cissie turns to the basin, plugs in a drain stopper and starts running the hot water. She removes a heap of cups and plates from the sink and stacks them on the dish rack. Then she draws back the short floral curtains and pushes the windows open to let in a gust of air. The water slams hard against the sink. She squeezes soap against the steam.

  On the other side of the counter, Ruan and I watch.

  Cissie whisks the soap to a lather with her hand. Then she closes the tap and flicks the foam off her fingers. The crazy thing is, she says, I almost didn’t bother going today.

  I return my eyes to my knees and notice a plastic bottle lying on its side under her table. I reach for it and find it still closed. Then I get up and hand it to her.

  Cissie receives it with a nod, unscrews the lid and sniffs the top. She starts to huff and the bottle crinkles inward. Done, she leaves it to drop in the sink. She brushes both hands over her face. Then she arranges the plates on the dish rack.

  The client, she says. When does he want to meet?

  I look at Ruan. He keeps his eyes on his phone.

  Tonight, he says.

  Cissie nods. I want the money, she tells us.

  Then she reaches for a dishcloth and dries her hands and elbows. She turns around.

  Do you?

  This is what she asks us.

  Ruan and I fall silent for a moment. Then we answer her at the same time. We tell her that we do.

  Cissie finds half a pack of Tramadol on her top shelf. She’s kept it in an old Horlicks tin above the kitchen counter, saving it for a day like today. We split the pills over her glass coffee table. Then, while passing around a glass of water, Cissie gets a text message from Julian. It’s about a Protest Party at his flat off Long Street. We take what’s left of the pills.

  Outside, the sky’s grown dark again, thick and almost leaden in texture. To the north, columns of rain emerge from the hills that once came together, more than a million years ago, to create the crest and saddle of Devil’s Peak. We smoke another cigarette with the painkillers. Then we wait for a taxi out on the main road. I get the feeling, as we do, that the sky could drop down on us at any moment.

  Thankfully, the trip doesn’t take long. The sky shows no interest in us, and we arrive at Julian’s an hour later. Standing across the road from his place, I realize that my hours have become something foreign to me, that they’ve taken on a pattern I can no longer predict.

  Looking out over the cobblestones on Greenmarket Square— each orb cut from a slab of industrial granite, connecting the cafés on the right with the Methodist Mission on Longmarket, where hawkers and traders from different sectors of the continent erect stalls and barter their impressions of Africa—I feel my thoughts branch out and scatter, grow as uncountable as the cobblestones beneath us, as if each thought were tied to every molecule that comprises me, each atom as it moves along its random course.

  Ruan waves to the security guard. I ring Julian’s intercom and we get buzzed to the eleventh floor. On our way up, we stand apart, the mirrors in the lift reflecting the fluorescent lights. We remain quiet, facing ourselves as our bodies get hauled through thick layers of concrete. I lean against the lift wall and think of Greenmarket Square again, and how, not too far from here, and less than two hundred years ago, beneath the wide shadow of the muted Groote Kerk, slaves were bought and sold on what became a wide slab of asphalt, a strip divided by red-brick islands and flanked by parking bays where drivers are charged by the hour; behind them, yesteryear’s slave cells, which are now Art Deco hotels and fast-food outlets. I think of how, despite all this, on an architect’s blueprints, the three of us would appear only as tiny icons inside the square of the lift shaft, each suspended in an expanse of concrete.

  Then the lift doors slide open.

  Cissie walks out of the lift and Ruan and I follow a step behind, trailing her down a long open walkway. We don’t say anything else about her aunt. The three of us don’t mention our meeting with the client, either. Instead, we reach Julian’s flat in silence, propping ourselves up in front of his white door.

  Cissie knocks.

  Julian’s door has a silver number: an eleven hundred with two missing zeroes. In the corridor, voices mill together in a growing murmur over the music, while shadows dance behind the dimpled window. Outside, a couple sits on the fire escape behind us, a few steps below the landing, holding bottles of Heineken and sharing a cigarette. Cissie and Ruan face straight ahead, focused on getting themselves inside the party. The music seems to get louder, too, and the weather grows colder, but that doesn’t seem to bother us.

  Loud footsteps approach on the other side of the door, and before long we hear someone struggling with the lock.

  Looking back down, I notice that the couple, both in black winter jackets and thick woolen beanies, have a large cardboard cut-out leaning over the steel steps behind them. The placard bears a detailed illustration of the female anatomy.

  Eventually, Julian manages to get his door open. He greets us from the threshold, his face painted bright silver. He’s both tall and peppy tonight, so tall, in fact, that we have to look up to see his face. Smiling, he uses his long arms to wave us in.

  Please, guys, he says, come inside.

  Ruan, Cissie, and I file into the hallway and then into the kitchen. It’s a small space, with brandy boxes lying flattened across the tiles. The three of us try to walk around them as Julian follows behind.

  We went to a farm earlier, he says, waving his hand across the kitchen counter. From one end to the other, the surface is packed with raw vegetables. Liquor bottles emerge intermittently from the grove.

  Help yourselves, Julian says, and we do.

  Cissie takes our quarts from me. We bought them with a bottle of wine at the Tops near Gardens. I keep the Merlot and rinse out three coffee mugs in the sink. The brown water inside the basin looks a day old, so I yank the plug-chain. Then I stand there for a moment, watching as the fluid swirls out.

  I’m not surprised to find the drain half-clogged. I’ve been in and out of places like Julian’s for most of my adult life. One year, Cissie brought a colleague over and we played Truth or Dare at West Ridge. On a Truth, I’d tried but fail
ed to piece together how many times I’d woken up shoeless on someone’s lidless toilet. Nicole, the colleague, had meant the question in good humor, but even as we all laughed, I remembered how most times, my eyes would be half-focused, the door swaying as my pants rode off my ankles.

  Well, do you like it?

  Julian breaks out in a laugh behind me. He points a finger at his chin and wipes a thumb across his forehead. The contrast between his face and his mascara makes his eyes appear pressed out, or even feral. Each orb bulges out in shock, as if from proptosis, a sign of an overactive thyroid, and a sometime symptom of the virus I have inside me. Standing in place, and swaying on his feet, Julian achieves an eerie trembling, as if he were a supporting character excerpted from a malfunctioning video game, now stranded in a different reality, awaiting instruction in our less tractable environment.

  I don’t know, Cissie says. She leans back against the counter.

  On her right, Ruan pulls out a carrot and inspects it. He breaks off the stem and starts chewing. I open the bottle of wine and pour us each a coffee mug of Merlot. Then Julian starts laughing again. I look up and find him still swaying.

  Think about this, he says. Under the kitchen light, his teeth shimmer like dentures. He waves his hands and tells us to listen.

  We prepare to. I hand Ruan and Cissie their mugs and, taking a sip from my own, lean back and wait for him to start.

  I’m doing something bigger than all my previous marches, Julian says.

  I nod, sipping the Merlot. Ruan pulls out another carrot from the grove.

  Cissie and I watch him as he yawns into his sleeve.

  I suppose none of this is new to us. Julian hosts a party like this every second month now. He ends each of them the same way, too, by locking everyone inside his flat before morning. The reason he calls them protests is because the following day, he organizes his guests, a half-stoned mass, into a march outside the parliament gates. There, Julian takes pictures of them, which he then sells at a gallery in Woodstock.

  Cissie used to be classmates with him. They attended the University of Cape Town together, both receiving MFA’s from Michaelis, before Cissie became a teacher. I once read an interview Julian had given to the arts section of a local weekly. Towards the end, when the interviewer had asked him if his marches were protests in earnest or just performance art, he’d chosen to skip the question. Later, when I googled him, I found a one-minute clip of Julian playing a prank on his agent: he arrived at his exhibition disguised as one of the parking attendants working on Sir Lowry Road, in a green luminous vest and a cap slung low over his forehead. The gallery walls held large framed photographs of his marches, and the video ended with Julian wearing a wine-stained paper cup on his head.