The Reactive (10 page)

I thank her as she sends another text from her phone. She doesn't respond, and I watch her walk back to the man in the cowboy hat, who orders another brandy.

Jesus, Ruan says, this guy booked the whole floor.

The whole floor, Cissie echoes.

My brain gives me nothing to add to this, so I ask them if we should finish our beer or take it up with us.

We need to revise our strategy, Ruan says.

Yes, we need to do that, Cissie says. Let's decide on a plan.

I tell them again that we shouldn't volunteer any information.

Ruan asks if we should mention seeing the money.

Not until he mentions it first, I say.

Then Cissie takes a long sip from her beer and we do the same. Fuck it, she says. What can he do to us here? She pushes back from the counter. This is a public place, isn't it?

It is. We've really done all we can to prepare, I say.

Ruan agrees, and in my head, I think: if he's Bhut' Vuyo then he's Bhut' Vuyo.

We just have to keep a cool head with him, I say.

Right, Ruan says. He gets up and stretches his arms. I need to take a leak. Don't sneak off without me.

Like you'd mind that, Cissie says.

Then Ruan takes a gulp from his quart, and, wiping the foam off his lips, stalks off to the bathroom. Left behind, Cissie and I slouch on our seats.

During a free kick, she turns to me and says, be honest, Nathi, are you afraid?

I tell her honestly, I don't know.

Me neither, she says. I have no idea what to think any more.

I got stabbed once, I tell her.

Really? Where?

I was in Obs.

The ghouls gathered around the plasma screen roar at another missed goal. For a while, Cissie and I drink in silence. Then Ruan comes back and leans on the counter.

He sighs.

I'm ready, he says, clasping his hands together.

He takes another sip from his beer, and when he's done, I say we should go up and see what happens to us. Ruan and Cissie try to laugh, but it doesn't last long. I can tell it's only to humor me.

We leave the counter just as the game hits half-time. The soccer louts rush back to the bar, each of them griping and cheering over their glasses of brandy. I guess it gets hard to pick them apart, sometimes, the winners and the losers, but in any case, the three of us don't stick around to find out who's who.

We take our beers and walk up the staircase next to the men's room, where we find Vincent, the resident bouncer, arranging his face into a scowl. To get a clear image of Vincent, you'd have to imagine five slabs of braaied beef, all arranged in a pile and wrapped up in a beanie and a black dress shirt. Then you'd have to think of a pair of black jeans and black desert boots. None of them new, but pressed and buffed to look it.

I slow my friends down. Keeping myself at a distance, I tell the bouncer that it's us and that we're here for a meeting.

Vincent looks dubious.

He faces down and creases his brow. Naturally, he asks me who we are.

We're here to see the guy, I say, and point at the door.

He eyeballs us. Prove it, he says. Vincent centers himself in front of the door. I guess it's a bouncer maneuver or something.

I look at him and all I can think of is, whatever, I concede.

I tell Vincent we're here for hospital work; that we're working in the field as volunteers. The three of us, I say, we've all got jobs in a ward at Groote Schuur. That's what we have to talk about with the man inside. We're consulting.

He clicks his tongue. Consulting, he says. Still staring at us, Vincent raises a beefy paw to his face and draws a slow, tight circle in front of his forehead.

Was his face eaten by pigs? he asks.

I don't know what to tell him. To my right, Ruan says we can't disclose that.

Then Vincent nods. He sizes up Ruan before his eyes glide down to the quarts in our hands. Tell me, he says, what kind of hospital meeting is it where you have three children holding bottles of beer?

I sigh. I can't think of anything else.

Then the door cracks open and a woman approaches Vincent from behind. She lays a thin hand on his shoulder, and her voice flows out of her like a whisper.

Vincent, the man says to let them in, she says. You can collect your tip at the bottom till. Her hand drops and she disappears back into the room.

Vincent considers us a moment longer. Then, slowly, he starts to nod.

Okay, he says. You've convinced me. Feigning reluctance, but clearly pleased by his tip, he opens the door to the upstairs bar and waves us in like a butler.

Ruan, Cissie and I step over the threshold one after the other. Then we stand there holding our quarts, our eyes adjusting to the dimness.

I realize I've stopped breathing. That's when I hear his voice.

Please lock the door after you, he says. You'll soon learn how much I'm devoted to my people, but I'm afraid I'm not very fond of their intrusions.

It's strange, but when I hear him, I feel I have no choice but to do as he says. There's a strange, but commanding quality to the man's voice, and not only in volume, but also in texture. It has a metallic ring around its loudness, like a recording pushed through a speaker.

I take a shallow, faltering breath. Then I lock the door and trace his voice to a corner in the far left, where there's a silhouette of a man leaning back on one of the leather couches, one leg bent at the knee and crossed over the other. Above him, ribbons of smoke curl against the ceiling light, forming a mist in front of the windows overlooking St Peter's Road.

I'm over here, he says, waving his hand.

My head clears and my nausea thins out. I look through the room and locate his head, a long narrow face in silhouette against the large road-lit panes.

Please take a seat with me, he says.

Ruan, Cissie and I move towards him.

The woman behind the bar stares at us with a blank expression. She's also pressing the buttons on a cellphone. I watch its blue glow playing up her neck, a light that reveals a sharp jaw moving around a wad of gum. The three of us move past her.

You can't possibly still imagine I'm the law, the man laughs.

This is how he talks. He booms in a register that's picked out from two centuries ago. His tone sounds tired and tickled at the same time.

Ruan, Cissie and I find our seats opposite him at the low table.

Here we are, I guess.

Here's the ugly man. Here's our client.

He has his head down, his face covered in shadows. You get the feeling his features are nondescript, even in sunlight, and that his skull, closely shaven and dimly reflecting the street glow, looks like the skull of any other man. It's almost as if, in calling himself ugly, he's erased his features, drawing attention to something that isn't there. There's no way to describe him above the V of his white shirt. I lean back, confused.

Please allow me a moment, he says.

We do. We watch his fingers prod, fussing over a black PDA device on the coffee table. It's thick, about the size of my hand, and he's set it flat on its back. It's probably what he used to send us the emails, and the scanned IDs he intimidated us with. It has a dim screen light that illuminates only his wrists and cufflinks. More than once, he cracks the knuckles of his right hand as if in frustration at its speed or, I think to myself, as if to ground a stray current. Either way, I wouldn't be surprised.

The man clears his throat. He doesn't look up at us, but we watch him as he bunches his fingers around a stylus pen. He swipes a gray icon across the small screen.

I should tell you I'm rather pleased you were able to find your way to me, he says. I was beginning to wonder if I might've been the cause of too much trouble. I understand I called for us to meet at short notice and for that I should extend an apology, and believe me when I say I do. However, as you'll soon learn for yourselves, the matters which bring us together bear their own sensitivities regarding the dictates of time, and for that reason alone, I'm confident that our arrangement, as hasty or as modest as it might seem, is perhaps the one that could serve our purposes best.

Done, he pushes his PDA aside. Clicking open his gold cigarette case, he pauses for a moment. Then he weaves his head and trains his eyes through the dimness, raising his right hand to signal to the bartender.

My dear, he says, might we have the lights back on?

I hear the bartender closing her till. Her silhouette saunters around the counter and approaches the entrance. It turns a knob and a mist of yellow light settles over us.

Finally, here he is, I think to myself. He's wearing a three-piece suit, a deep red that matches the hat on the table. The hat is a long-brimmed fedora. It has a feather tucked inside the band.

This is when I realize what's unsettling me about his face. He's wearing a mask.

The man clears his throat and starts talking again.

You'd be shocked, he says, sounding both surprised and amused, how little science has accomplished for the facial prosthetic. The field's first and, by my humble estimate, truest visionary was a man born in the year of 1510. He was a Frenchman by the name of Ambroise Paré, who used to shear the hair off kings to earn his keep in the royal courts. He had as his regular clients Henry II, Charles IX and Henry III. Francis II is also said to have sat under his blade during his short kingship. In his work as a surgeon, however, he was a man at home on the battlefield. He made limbs for soldiers maimed during the wars, you see.

Here he pauses. He taps his cigarette filter on the gleaming case, his long fingers pushing the air out of the stick and compacting the tobacco leaves.

I see you've already helped yourselves to something to drink, he says. It's no bother, but should you want more, I beg you only to mention it. I should say, also, that Nolwazi here holds my vote as the best bar maiden this side of the mountain. He turns his head towards her, then back to us.

Now, he says, where was I? Oh, yes, we were discussing Ambroise Paré, weren't we?

He goes on like this. It turns out it's from the First World War, this mask he has on. That's what he tells us, anyway. He says nothing about his voice, but I can detect a hum whenever he takes a moment to breathe. I keep my eyes settled on his mask.

Well, he says, the technique itself is from the Great War. I'm afraid this hunk of tin isn't quite as old as that. You'll have to forgive me my indulgence. I tend to have a desire to get the face and mask out of the way as soon as I can. It's the only way I can guarantee myself anyone's attention. My face is somewhat of an attraction, you see. I myself am no stranger to its oddities. However, I invited you here for matters unrelated to my appearance. Now, friends, if you don't mind, may I?

He raises his hands to the sides of his face and holds them up against his ears. Ruan, Cissie and I sit with our hands by our sides, staring at him in silence.

The man's mask is painted the sandy color of his hands and his neck, with two round holes for eyes and two piercings at nose level for breathing holes. Just above the chin, it's carved into three narrow slits for him to speak through.

Cissie says, so there's a reason you didn't get plastic surgery?

This doesn't surprise us, me and Ruan, that Cissie would be the first to break through our silence.

I reach down for my beer again. The sip I take from the bottle tastes warm, and it causes my mouth to fill up with saliva. The bitterness clings to the sides of my tongue, trickling down my throat and knotting my stomach. I put the bottle back between my knees.

The man, as if noticing my discomfort, drops his hands.

He shakes his head and says, Monsieur Paré. The first men he patched up from the wars broke his big foolish heart. He gave them back their arms and legs and they took their own lives. They didn't favor their looks, you see. I've never understood those men. If you ask me, a man is given his scars as a consequence of his spirit, his battles out in the world.

He shakes his head, his answer to plastic surgery.

Then, following a brief pause, he says, now, I do trust I have your permission?

The man's hands pull at the sides of his mask and he lifts the tin off his face. Leaning back on the couch, with his arms set apart and his one leg over the other, his hands find the arm rests and his face reveals itself. If he's smiling, then none of us can tell.

Half his face appears burnt, the skinless meat gleaming in full view.

He's still facing us when the bartender walks over with a brandy snifter on a cloth-covered tray. The man nods at her and she disappears without a sound to sit behind the bar. He smokes his cigarette through a long white tube fitted into his throat, and half of the right side of his face is missing. The skin on the bottom half of his neck seems to lighten on its way down to his chest. It's a pattern that gives definition to how his larynx varies in relief. Tracing it down from his chin, it continues to rise as it descends, until it pushes itself taut against his skin, outlining the contour of a perfect cylinder.

The man watches me as I stare at him. Then he raises a hand to his neck.

Of course, I've had to adopt a more recent approach with my voice. I find it rather important that one does what one can in order to be heard, don't you?

The flesh around his larynx vibrates when he speaks, and this is when I realize he has a machine humming against the walls of his throat. I look up.

You paid us a lot of money, I say. What for?

The man breathes out smoke through his nostrils. I'm under the impression my intention was clear, he says. I want to make a purchase.

We don't have any pills on us, I say.

He considers this and nods. I watch the smoke holding still around his face, like a meadow fog.

I figured as much, he says, unfazed. It was, after all, very short notice, as I've said. He inhales again and lets the smoke seep out.