Dub Steps (34 page)

Sthembiso is a strapping man, confident in his walk and his body. He maintains a chiskop at all times, the bald scalpiness of his skin all business and action. Never has he moved even slightly towards dreads or free growth, a reflection of his singular nature and his complete, overwhelming focus on whatever it is he is focusing on.

We maintain a respectful distance.

I display many of the obvious symptoms of jealousy and resentment in the way I interact with him. I resent what he is doing and has done with the farm, and I am jealous of … well, everything. I want that small eager boy back.

I expected something different. His aggression represents all my disappointments for what could or should have been. His presence marks the loss of my own dreams, the full and final shutdown of my own ambitions.

I make sure not to fall too gratefully into the calming impact of his presence when he decides to bestow it on me. I know – because Babalwa, his mother, told me, often – that I am remote and removed from him. That I am pointedly absent. Distant enough for it to be a matter of common cause across the farm, within my generation and among all the kids. Roy and Sthembiso have issues.

Which is fair enough, I suppose. He and I are both aware of the deeper forces that have set the trajectory of our society. The others may hail the miracles and the luck, the striking of fortune against the flint, they may hail their god, but Sthembiso and I are very aware that these have not been purely fortunate stumblings.

Still, our distance is not absolute. We have managed to find small spaces to fill out on our own. Every now and again, maybe once or twice a year, he will come and sit with Camille and me,
his heavy frame sinking into one of my small stoep chairs, which buckles and breathes audibly at the weight of him.

‘Roy,’ he said the last time, about three or four months ago, ‘do you believe in fate and God and life after death and aliens and all that?’ His accent crisp, clean. The Queen’s language. It’s one of the ways he keeps his authority, wielding the power of his formality against his progeny. The rest may talk like lost grammatical orphans, when they use English at all, but Sthembiso is word-perfect. His prompts. The exhortations and motivations of the interface, these are perfect too – perfection the sign of power. Great power. Remote and decisive.

‘Jesus, boy, you’re bundling a lot into one basket there.’

He smiled. ‘Well, you know what I mean. I’m referring to—’

‘Yes, I know. You mean the spiritual. Do I pray? Do I believe there is a larger force and/or forces that have influence over the course of my life? Do I believe this waking moment is all there is, or do I believe that other forces are at play in corners I cannot see? Yes?’

He peered at me carefully and approximated a nod.

‘I’m not sure. I never have been. I can tell you this though – we are bundles of complex energy. We are combinations of circuits and neurons and cells, and we are very sensitive as a result. We are easily influenced by electricity, by energy, so I don’t see any reason why there aren’t lots of different kinds of energy out there – many that we aren’t even aware of – guiding and shaping what we do and how we do it, et cetera, et cetera.’

‘Do you dream?’

‘Of course. We all do. Depends on how many joints I’ve smoked whether I can remember them or whether they take over my entire night, but that’s just a matter of degree. Do you dream, Sthembiso?’

He leaned his elbows onto his knees, his enormous muscled body purring with potential energy. ‘God speaks to me every night.’

‘How do you know it’s God?’

‘There are things in my dreams, lessons, lessons I use in this world, and they work.’ He ran a hand over his scalp, producing a rough, sandpaper sound. ‘You know. Networks. Circuits. What
we’re doing with the cell stations. Medicine. That time Thami broke his leg – I dreamed the repair, you know? I didn’t only make him sleep because I wanted him to calm down. I needed to dream. And I did. And then I knew.’

‘You think anyone else dreams like that?’

He was still rubbing his scalp. He gave a final triple rub, then stopped. ‘Maybe, but I haven’t seen or heard anything like mine.’ His eyes popped ever so slightly and suddenly I saw the little ten-year-old-boy who had organised the expo, who had chased down Eeeyus.

‘Let’s just say I know of what you speak, my boy. I don’t think your experience is the same as mine has been, but I understand what you’re saying. Not metaphorically. Practically.’

‘So, what do you think? Is it God? In my dreams?’

‘Well, what do you think? I listen to you preach, I see what you’re doing with the farm and the people and the parties and all of that, and I must say I wonder. How much of this is you? How much is the dreams? Can you answer that? Can you discern your dreams in your actions?’

His eyes popped further, then sank back. He looked silly, a pensive, troubled giant perched too delicately on a tiny frame. ‘I like to think when I’m doing things that it’s all logic, but in moments when I’m by myself, which is rare, obviously, I question where it’s coming from and why. Behind the logic, here’s this kind of swamp of motivation and, I don’t know, I don’t really even know who I am any more.’

‘You dreaming every night?’

‘Phewww.’ The air ran from him. ‘I guess. I think most nights – but also, I don’t know. You know how it is with dreams. There are the things you can remember and then there’s all the white noise in the background when you wake up, like you know a lot happened but you can’t get a handle on it.’

‘You ever speak to your mother about it – the dreams?’

‘No, I tried, but not hard enough.’

‘Sthem …’ I leaned forward. I implored. ‘Beatrice and Andile and me and Fats, we’re pretty much gone. Fats can’t find his own
zipper, I just sit here with Camille and daydream, and Beatrice and Andile aren’t far behind. Time is short. So you should know. When it happened, when everyone disappeared, your mother dreamed the kind of dreams you’re talking about. If I were you, I would talk to the others about it, to Fats even. I don’t think you can carry on with these questions without finding out more about her and her dreams. That means Fats. See if you can get something linear from him.’

We talked more of the past, me clinging to the decades, all gone now, drops in the river. I asked Sthem if he was sure he was right in what he was doing, and he said all he had was his heart, and his heart wasn’t asking any questions that couldn’t be answered.

I said that will have to do.

I asked him if he was in control of the numbers – if they all added up. To me it still looked like there were too many kids, too many people. It wasn’t the first time I had broached the subject, and it wasn’t the first time he evaded it, a tetchy furrow running across his brow, followed quickly by a trust accusation – his stock reply.

This is how it has been with Sthembiso and me for years. The distance between us punctuated by these awkward occasional meetings, filled with allusions to the things in between. We chatted on for a few minutes, about the details of this and that. I probed again around the unilateral music ban – the tyranny of the trance.

Next to Gerald’s body they had found a note. Dub, his final scrawl made sure to tell us. True dub.

To me it was the scrawl of hope. Of real, honest-to-God hope – the kind based on something tangible and physical. As much as their savagery to English was just that – savagery – their presence was still, ultimately, a light. A flicker on the horizon.

Sthembiso took it in a completely different direction. For him, their dub cast our trance in a new context of conflict. Everyone knew better than even to try to slip a fatter bass line in anywhere. A jazzy beat. An old rock ’n’ roll tune … Never.

Never.

In case the message hadn’t spread far or fast enough, in case the sight of the daily departing drones, reaching ever further, bringing back ever more, did not fully carry the military message, his lectures and sermons began referencing the importance of continuity and the danger of those heavy-handed, as yet unknown but clearly existent Zambian savages, waiting, surely, definitely, with their lazy beats and their machetes and their glazed, stoned, dubbed-out eyes …

There is us, Sthembiso said. And there is them. They left Gerald’s body in a tree. Strips hanging off it. Do the math, and do not be afraid of the numbers – they tell us what we need to know.

After Sthembiso had departed that last time, I had the sudden urge to talk to Sihle, my direct offspring. As a child he tended towards the coy and annoying, but in his later years he picked up enough confidence to show that his childhood uncertainty was just that – uncertainty. Now he was in charge of the Soweto Calabash, running, by all accounts, a fairly large set-up. There was much talk of parallel digital ports and docking points and such things beyond the ken of an old half-toothed man.

I strolled slowly, carefully, along the back paths, the neon-free paths, to the main house. This, I decided, would be the time. An appropriate time to finally use the landline. I asked one of the kids to dial it up for me. It looked for all the world like an old cellphone, but it was attached by a cable to an unusually large docking base, which in turn led to a nest of thick cables, all running away in different directions. The details were beyond me, but I had seen a few of them on it and it appeared to function pretty much like an old two-way radio in the connection phase. As far as I could gather – and that wasn’t very far, admittedly – the two-way connection was required to activate the call. One had to literally summons the party on the other side via a series of rings. The other party then had to flick a set of switches.

Once all had done what they needed to do, the handset could undock from its base and be used like a phone of old.

‘Sihle?’ I bellowed down the line.

‘Hola?’ His voice was surprisingly light, like a teenager.

‘It’s Roy.’

‘Roy? Really?’ He was surprised and amused. ‘Nice, Ntate. I’m honoured. Wot’s cooking down de?’

‘Nothing really. That’s why I decided to call. Seeing as they’ve got this set-up it makes sense to use it, I supposed.’

‘Korrek. Good call. An good to hear your voice, good to hear. Tell me something exciting. Ish is pretty dead this side.’

‘Sheesh. I was hoping you could tell me. Uhhh … oh, they’ve asked me to DJ at the next session.’

‘Ja? Wikkid. Nice. Okei … I might come through. I might definitely come through.’

‘Ja. Bit weird really but thought I’d give it a shot.’

‘Sho. Mthakathi on the decks. The kiddies will love it.’ He waited awkwardly for something, some reason.

‘Well, I guess I’ll let you get back. I just suddenly, I just wanted to hear your voice.’

‘Super. Dope to hear yours.’ He sounded relieved, and just the tiniest bit impatient. ‘You live well now, Roy. Don do nuffing I wouldn’t do. Ha ha.’

‘I love you, boy.’ The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

‘Uh, ja. Wow. Sho. Thanks, Roy. Love you too, broe.’ Awkwardness flooded the line. ‘Uh, gotta go. I being summonsed. Shot for the call, nè? I see you soon.’

‘Yup, see you soon.’

I gave the phone back to the nearest sprog and drifted back to my cottage, thinking about the rare occasions my father had attempted similar phone calls or interactions, about the way his sudden attempts at emotional contact would strike at me, out of the blue. Nonetheless, I felt good having at least given it a go. He will remember when I am gone.

Now there is nothing. Everything I have from here is incidental. (This bag of bones is seriously sagging. That I can tell you. That is new. I reach out with weak, flopping arms. Things fall suddenly from my fingers. My feet stub into the ground – I cannot lift them.)

I pack my disks carefully. I asked the sound kids to set up one of those old CD things, the ones that mimic the original vinyl decks. I run through the set in my head. I am nervous. I will be defying. I will be risking. It’s an invigorating feeling, risk. The knowledge of the bullet. I feel alive. Thrilled.

I can hear the trance beating out from the fields. Armand Van Helden, I think.

I intend to leave these children with something deeper. With a challenge. I am going to shake them. Open their little eyes and their tiny, shrinking hearts.

Matron fetches me. Tight, tight jeans and a small pink thing up top, she’s oozing sex. Her pupils are blazing and I wonder exactly what she’s on, and if Sthem really has as much control as he believes, but … well, it’s not my business. It hasn’t been for a long time.

Up on the decks I look over the crowd – seems like there’s more than a hundred of them, little children. My children. I dab my finger on my tongue and put it to the air and they scream, then laugh, then shake those bony little asses. Matron giggles and shakes uncontrollably next to me, loving the limelight, the moment, the honoured position up high.

I bring it in slow, mixing imperceptibly from what was. They don’t notice – they’re too far out there on that plain, but I keep bringing it until we’ve switched, we’ve moved from that terrible, relentless
pace into something deeper, the dub pulse pushing, insistent.

Their bodies find it before their minds do. I watch them realise in the smallest of jumps, the tiniest of increments. Then I kill the drum and it’s just the synth, lifting and lifting, and their baby fingers go up. I see Sthembiso at the back of the tent and he isn’t liking this at all. Not at all. He’s got the laser-beam stare on me and next to him there are three, maybe four of his boys, all muscles and slit eyes, and two of them I can see, even from this distance, bulge with weapons.

He holds my eyes and leans into one of their ears and a fat neck nods and slips out the back. The kids start to whoop – I mean, really whoop – they’re still lifting, their bodies know what’s coming, their ears tuning to the rebellion. It’s going to sing. It’s going to be delicious.

And I think, Jesus, here I am, a little dying man on the decks, here I really am, doing this, and there they are, loving with eyes stronger than I can imagine, embracing a thought I can no longer conceive, the little ones heading out into the future, and for a second, just an instant, in a blue and pink flash of light, I think I see Madala in his blue overall, right at the back of the tent, behind Sthem and his boys. And then he’s gone.

But the synth is still going, lifting and lifting, and now they’re impatient, they need it. There is no meaning if it doesn’t come, now, and I lift my arm, my tired old broken arm, one last time. I push it into the air and they scream and yelp like the little children they are, and then, finally, after all these years, I drop it. I drop it, at long, long last.