The Ghost-Eater and Other Stories (15 page)

My eyes fall back on the clock and it claims my stare for a full five minutes. At 9.35 my consciousness stirs into fuller existence.
She must have taken it.
I shut my eyes and clench my thighs. I am such a fucking idiot! Whimpering at my hazy realisation, I follow the long hand of the clock. Each passing minute sees my glance. She's not coming back. She will not return with my phone or my iPod. But, most terribly, she won't return to me.

 

I try and retrace my steps. Try and remember the evening in sequence, but it's just too hard. I keep getting sidetracked and turned on by the haphazard flashbacks. Two thighs straddling me. Her body tensing up. The view from the bottom, of the contours of her breasts … No. My memory is doing me more harm than good. I put the evening out of my mind.

I stroke my cigarette box, showing it how much I appreciate its presence. I cherish those inanimate objects that aid my survival. They never judge or betray me. They never abandon me or smash out my windows. They're simply there when I need them. Deserving of my affections.

I weigh the box in my hand. Ja, she's definitely taken a couple of cigarettes. I open the box. There are only two left. She stole my cigarettes and left me two smokes in the box for when I wake up. What a bitch. Steals
my
smokes, and leaves me
two
. Like a consolation prize. My phone and my music – fine – I understand those. She could sell those, or whatever. I should have been wiser about locking them up. But my smokes! Now, that's just fucking cruel. Insult to injury. How am I supposed to get through the morning?

I pull out one of the two smokes left in the box and stare at the cigarette's long, white figure. I can't help being reminded of her long, white figure. Naked and whole, the cigarette glares back at me. Don't look at me like that. I light a match to break its well-tailored, smooth length. It seems to squeal at the approaching fire. I can almost hear it screaming at me: You
lit
me! You
bitch
! How
dare
you?

Oh dear. I venture a drag and watch the lazy smoke drift up to my ceiling. Immediately, I recall the smoke floating from her lips, up past her arched back, to the pink zenith of her nipple. A fool's paradise. Still, I want to slip her into a glass of wine, pour her into my mouth, curl my tongue around her and drink her down. I'm gonna need another smoke after this smoke. My eager hand edges towards the box. No. It's my last one. I'd better save it.

 

To get to the kettle, I will need to cross the floor on which her lingerie lies taunting me. The morning light streams through the lace. Her silk panty is inside out. The cotton triangle, that covered her sweetest part, is facing me in the middle of the room. I will have to get up off my sheets that she's smudged with her perfume. How unfair.

My heart is pounding. The truth is taking its time to settle in. I have to take things slowly. I get up and place each foot delicately in front of the other, stepping over her lingerie, taking care not to touch her traces. I make my way to the kettle, put it on and listen to it rumbling, enjoying the warmth of the steam rising up to my skin. I make myself a cup of instant coffee with seven spoons of sugar.

I glance over at my coffee table. The ashtray is full. But my wallet is missing. So is my bag with my lipstick, my car keys and my asthma meds. My laptop is also missing from the table. My stomach turns and I stare at the clock, trying to figure out exactly when she left. When exactly did I fall asleep?

I look down at my coffee again and a huge spider has made its way onto the mug. How long had I been staring at the time? The spider is perched nervously on the brim, legs elastic, ready to jump, dive, feed, attack … I'd better not approach. I watch from a distance, grateful for the distraction from my stupidity. No tobacco, no music, no phone. Just me and the spider. Both idiots. It's going to drown itself. I should warn it. I should save it. But I can't bring myself to pick it up.

‘You gonna die,' I mumble, but it doesn't seem to hear me.

I really needed that coffee. But I'll let the spider have it. I'll move onto something stronger. At least it'll die a rich, aromatic death. It's a good way to go.

There's nothing quite as comforting as wine on an empty stomach. Trying to maintain my calm, I walk to towards my wine rack and see that it is askew. Three bottles have been removed. No, four. And the bitch took the vintage.

Fuck.

Maybe something even stronger then. I open my corner cupboard and take out my only bottle of cognac. She wouldn't have known to look here. Plonking three ice blocks into the Bisquit, I already feel consoled. Pouring the gold down my throat, I know that reality can be kept at bay a little while longer. I light the second cigarette, ignoring its scream at the approaching flame. I drag on it mercilessly. It squeals louder and I'm immediately overcome by a coughing fit. I cough her clean out of my system and, through the coughing, the memory comes back like a surge of phlegm.

She strolled into my house all fresh, smelling of success. She must've come to the pub freshly showered. Cream and cologne on clean skin. Damp hair on pink cheeks. Marshmallow lips still warm from the steam. All crevices soaped, perfumed and moisturised. I vividly recall her sex-swept hair flowing down her pale neck. A woman airbrushed by God. Was I so charmed by her? So emotionally vulnerable? Just stupidly drunk?

I look at the spider, now paralysed and starting to sink. I told you you were going to die. ‘Time of death: 10.45,' I mumble. As I kill the second cigarette, I feel it trying to kill me. Overwhelmed by another wild coughing fit, I can't get a breath in. The sound of my cough fills the house and a sharp pain pierces my chest. I can't reach the phone. I stumble to reach my bag, which isn't there, to get my asthma pump and I remember that it's gone. The pain in chest is debilitating and a black haze starts to cloud my peripheral vision. It blurs the kettle, the mug, the spider and the clock in what looks like black smog. With no more oxygen left in my lungs, I close my eyes and join the spider in finality.

 

When I awake, I look at the clock and an hour has past. I'm wheezing like an emphysema patient on my deathbed. Jassis. If she wanted to kill me, she could've been kinder about it than stealing my fucking asthma pump. I'd rather have drowned going down on her.

I scratch around in my drawer to find my spare bank card. When I find it, I slip it into my jeans pocket, where I discover a loose R50 note. Thank God. I go outside and stare at the gap in front of my house where my Polo used to stand. The tief stole my car.
I hope you crash and die as a result of my broken handbrake, you thieving bitch.

Pacing each painful breath, I walk to the ATM and slip in my card. I wait as the machine takes longer than usual to respond. When it eventually returns my card, I see no cash sliding out of the machine. My bank slip reads, ‘Insufficient funds'.

I lick my lips. To my desolation, I can still taste her. With the last R50 stashed in my jeans pocket, I buy a new pack of smokes. Robbed by a white girl. I wouldn't have thought.

 

Sure as I am about what needs to be done, I feel my hands go limp.

‘I'd like to pursue criminal charges against a woman I met in one Blue Hearts Pub, as provided for in terms of Act 51 of 1977. I want to launch an application to the High Court in order to obtain an interdict against the aforesaid.'

The attorney raises an eyebrow at me. Perhaps, he's just tired of seeing me. Can I be blamed for my misfortune? He takes a form out of his drawer and sits down.

‘Have a seat, ma'am. You will need to provide a list of this woman's offences. What has she done? Be as specific as you can.'

As I speak, the attorney scribbles shorthand on the page and fixes me with a ridiculing stare.

 

She stole my phone, my iPod and my personal computer;

This was after I invited her into my home in an attempt to pursue contact;

She left my house in my car which she has failed to return;

In addition to the stolen electronics, she has also stolen my cigarettes;

I am also missing four bottles of vintage wine since her visit;

She has taken my handbag with my personal effects and medication;

The absence of my medication has nearly resulted in my death;

With my phone, personal computer and wallet, she got access to my accounts and cleared out my savings;

 

Heartbroken, I pause.

Needless to say, she has caused me immeasurable anxiety, pain and suffering.

 

I don't have the energy to tap my foot on the floor while waiting for a response.

‘I'll see what I can do for you, ma'am. Do you know the woman's name?'

With that question, I realise that police procedures will be impossible. A backlogged court and a nameless thief. My stomach is empty, my car is gone and I don't have money for a drink. I kick an empty soda can on the pavement.

I am done with women, I decide and walk home in silence.

 

The heat pulsing off the sides of the thousands of iron structures around her does nothing to slow her pace. More intense even than the sun beating down on her head, it has the opposite effect of quickening her stride, only punctuating the distress that has sent her on this late-afternoon walk from the train station.

The world before her is in slow motion, except for the noisy creaking and bending of overheating metal, and the rapid, yet faint, beating of her heart in her ears. Her breathing is laboured.

Wispy, yet as erect as a pole, she continues on, holding her breath as she passes a rotting animal corpse somewhere down a narrow alley. Suddenly, as she rounds the bend into the road that runs behind the school, the panic in her chest is too much to keep bottled up and she gasps as it flows up through her neck and then into the blood vessels in her face, automatically opening her tear ducts.

Frantically she breathes deeply in and out to bring her blood pressure down as she passes the container-barber's where a young man sits in the doorway, lazily smoking. He has dreadlocks and is puffing on a cone-shaped dagga joint.

‘Mama?' he says, a look of mild concern slowly coming over his face. ‘Are you arrright?'

‘Ewe, I am fine,' she lies.

She struggles on past the smoky meat stand that makes her nausea worse, the shebeen with the red quart bottle standing on the plywood counter top and then further along the potholed road dwarfed by the formidable Hottentots Holland peaks in the distance above it. All is quiet, except for the ringing of the barber's concern fading in her ears.

I am not used to silence in these streets, she thinks. Where I wanted to find the sound of life, I have instead found silence. Why are our young girls not skipping and our boys not playing soccer and cricket in the road? Why do they hide from the heat? It is only heat, after all. It is not fire.

Where are the daytime drinkers? she wonders. I have seen only one today, urinating messily against the wall of a shack. And the unemployed youths, why are they not leaning against the gates and fences of the homes of friends, whistling as I pass? Catcalling the freshness of womanhood, of young life, the freshness of my face, and my neck, and my breasts.

Maybe I am wearing evidence of marriage, she thinks, lifting a hand to touch her head, the absence of the headscarf incorrectly suggesting availability.

What about the Friday tsotsis? On the one day I am prepared for them, when I have nothing to lose, they do not show up!

Perhaps the girls and boys, the sun drinkers and car watchers, the unemployed youths and the Friday tsotsis have been told the news. Maybe they know what I know. If they do, does that mean they are simply going to look the other way? Just like when the tyre is burning, when we close our children's eyes with the hard pads of our hands and look to another corner of the street? Or like when the journalists come and ask us what we witnessed?

She realises that her blood pressure has subsided and that she is walking faster.

The heat is increasing all the time as the neatly dressed woman with the boy's hips glides gracefully on. Like a curtain in the wind.

When one moves one's hips, the water bucket falls, her grandmother cautioned her. I should have listened to her, she thinks. ‘A person who will not take advice understands when trouble overtakes him'; Makhulu had a proverb for every situation.

The cold tears of panic have already dried on her cheeks, but she can still feel their scabby saltiness. Lifting her wide-apart eyes to the sky for a second, she notices for the first time that thunderclouds have developed swiftly.

She lifts and twists her bottom lip slightly. It cannot be long until it rains. She knows that whatever happens, whether it rains or not, whether hailstones the size of minibuses crash from the sky – or not – it will have no effect on her.

I made my choices and now I must live with them. Or do whatever else is necessary.

She looks again at the enormous thunderclouds, which are building layer upon layer of water in the sky above her. For a moment their sheer size makes her feel small, yet almost alive.

On she walks, along the dusty kerb, past a quiet furniture stall, where the old bearded store owner sleeps on a rough bed on display under the vast sky, then past the vacant Sunday church and, on the other side of the road, a second deserted school.

Where are the children? It must be school holidays. She does not relate the question back to her own school-going child, who is being looked after by her aunt. It is as though the artery between her and the six-year-old has been severed. The bleeding has long since stopped; the wound has all but disappeared.

Suddenly all that exists below the giant, darkening clouds, even her thoughts, evaporates from her head. She may not feel the intense heat directly, it is not a reality to her, but she understands that it has become so hot that the silence is almost absolute.