‘Well, it’s no different here, is it?’ Garver said, carefully scooping the last of the gazpacho onto his spoon. Richard looked up at David, but his friend’s eyes were lowered, concentrating on buttering a piece of crusty bread. Cynthia seemed on the brink of protest again; Richard heard her sigh quietly to herself as she hunched over her plate.
‘Where do you think all our problems are coming from?’ Garver went on. ‘As if it’s not hard enough to deal with all our own people.’
Coetzee took a deep breath for effect: ‘Exactly, it’s the same here,’ he said. ‘The Nigerians and the Rwandans and … okay, the Zimbabweans you have to feel sorry for … but, I mean, these guys are like all illegal aliens; they get in here and they just suck out what they can. Do you know that I had an incident with one guy just a few days ago?’
Charmaine gasped: ‘What happened, Ryno? My God, you must be careful, man.’
Coetzee let his fringe fall endearingly in front of his face before plastering it back with an expert hand. ‘No, no worries, he was the one who ended up in trouble. Bit off more than he could chew, you know? But, you see, you just can’t be too careful with these guys.’
Charmaine started telling Amanda and Kristi a story of a robbery that had happened in their road. Kristi had her hand up to her mouth in alarm. Coetzee reached across and helped himself to more wine. The condensation on the cold bottle had run down onto the tablecloth, leaving a damp circle.
‘Shit, this sauvignon blanc is good, hey?’ he said, his gaze turned only on the men as he slurped a mouthful. ‘I know the owner of the estate, you know? Nice guy. British. Made his money in IT in the UK, then came over here, bought the farm. Sacked everyone … everyone, hey? Not a single
mannetjie
there left standing. Chucked them all off the farm: dogs, children, the lot. Started again. New workers, mainly casuals so he doesn’t have to worry about labour problems, you know? Lekker chicky as the winemaker.’ His voice lowered to a whisper to exclude Cynthia sitting next to him. ‘Bonus points, hey – good wine and a bit extra on the side, you know? What you call a fucking good wine,’ he chortled.
Richard stood up abruptly and escaped to the kitchen in search of another bottle. His daughter Raine was lurking in the lounge, flicking between channels on the satellite decoder, the volume muted. Amanda had refused to let her go out, insisting that she join them for the dinner party so that she could meet Coetzee’s wife. Before supper Raine had been lured by Kristi’s sexiness and youth and she had sat cross-legged on the couch talking to her about make-up and dieting programmes. But now that all the adults were seated, she had lost interest and was sulking. Amanda had surreptitiously removed her place setting before the other guests had reached the table and now ignored her daughter completely.
Richard’s relationship with Raine had always felt unbalanced. She treated him with benevolent disdain, as if he were too frail to enter her world. She regarded him as a necessary and sometimes quaint outsider, but never allowed him close. Even as a small child she had scolded him, calling him silly and hopeless. Her precociousness had been endearing, but it had also set the tone of their relationship as she grew up. Now, as a teenager, her dismissiveness was less playful. Richard’s paternal function was exercised exclusively by controlling her access to money. It was mercenary and unfulfilling, but it retained some role for him in her life. Raine’s attitude towards her mother was quite different: she connected with Amanda at certain levels, but they also fought wildly. Personal conversations were hushed and intense, sometimes held behind closed bedroom doors. Occasionally, Richard would stumble upon them, only to be furiously waved away as an unwelcome intruder. But Raine was highly reactive to her mother, irritated by a tone of voice, a simple statement, a seemingly inappropriate question. Doors were slammed and screaming encounters often ended with both of them in tears, while Richard hawked around the house, trying to find a sanctuary. By contrast, his aseptic relationship with Raine was unchallenging and easy. But he did envy the sparking passion she displayed towards Amanda. It was as if she simply could not take him seriously and for that reason had no cause to be triggered by his presence.
Richard had felt a suicidal urge to tell his daughter about the forbidden massage. The moment he had arrived home, his skin still soft from the oil, he had felt drawn towards opening up to her. He had stood at her doorway watching her blow-dry her hair, imagining how he would tell her. He would reinvent the woman as his beautiful lover. His risky infidelity would shock Raine, perhaps even gain her respect. He imagined her piggish eyes opening wide in disbelief – ‘Not you, Dad, no!’ – and then an elbowed snigger. Maybe a casually slapped palm, like he saw her exchange with her friends. He knew this desire for disclosure, for affirmation, was not only irrational, but also a bleak indication of how easily the apparent solidity of his world had fractured. It made him feel reckless. But when Raine had seen him watching her, she screwed up her face. ‘Freak,’ she mouthed at him and then grinned. He had smiled back, uncertain, and then retreated.
Richard returned to his half-eaten soup, the red purée stained against the white crockery like blood. He let his thoughts drift, watching Coetzee holding forth through a haze, nodding occasionally in agreement and topping up the guests’ glasses with wine. When he had first left the studio that afternoon, it had felt as if a defining moment had occurred in his life, a moment that would steer his travels on a different course regardless of whether it ever happened again. Indeed, at the time it seemed to him that to repeat the experience would be to diminish it; it needed to remain encapsulated as a once-off event that he could ruminate over at leisure. But after just a few hours he realised that it was more like a drug, the pleasure of which was so pure that he had a physical craving for more. Only, unlike a drug, he sensed that each time would be more satisfying, not less so. A drug would not grow with him; it could deliver only the same altered perception. But with this, there was the potential for greater intimacy, for trust to develop, perhaps allowing an emotional bond to form. He had to restrain himself from getting up from the table again. He wanted to leave the mundane social play, to be alone, so that he could capture her scent again, the feeling of her skin, the brush of her kiss on his eyebrow.
He caught David looking at him with interest. ‘You okay, Richard? You seem distracted, old boy. Nothing up, is there?’ Richard shook his head, aware that Amanda was glaring at him from the other end of the table while continuing an animated conversation with Kristi about a new gym instructor. Charmaine was listening intently, but looked half-drunk, lolling slightly to the side in her seat. Cynthia had left the table and was trying, without success, to engage Raine in small talk.
Richard felt far removed from them all, as if he were watching a dinner party on a grainy home-movie screen. People talked and moved and ate, and he observed them, without curiosity, taking in the meaningless motion. Perhaps I’m falling ill, he thought distantly, blinking and trying to concentrate. He stood up clumsily and walked to the whitewashed sideboard. He took some time to choose an ostentatious bottle of chilled syrah, replete with gold and silver stickers announcing the awards it had won. He had chosen wines that were expensive, as was his habit, relying on price rather than reputation to impress his guests. He carefully removed the empty white wine glasses from the table. Amanda ignored him as he brushed past her and leant over to take her glass away, red lipstick pressed neatly on the edge. He placed a cavernous red wine glass in front of each guest, save for Cynthia, who was drinking only mineral water. He moved robotically from one place setting to the next, oblivious to their murmured platitudes. The first bottle of wine was finished by the time he had made his way around the table and only a small layer, filled with sediment, rested in the bottom of his own glass. Still, he left the empty bottle on the table for his guests to inspect and chose another wine to open for air.
‘Good man, Calloway,’ David said loudly, holding up the empty bottle for all to see. Richard felt his mood lighten a little and he smiled at his friend.
‘Chilled too, old boy. Nice touch!’
‘Enjoy,’ Richard countered with stilted generosity.
‘Fucking excellent, mate,’ Coetzee bawled in a mock-Australian accent. Kristi tittered appreciatively.
Amanda was bringing out the main meal: small strips of sole resting on an oblong bed of wild rice, flanked by asparagus and green beans. Richard saw something childish in the presentation, as if it were meant to depict the face of a clown or a raggedy doll, to be offered to a reluctant toddler. But the guests were impressed, lavishing Amanda with praise and protesting that they couldn’t possibly eat such a work of art. Richard plunged his knife across the midriff of the caricature. He could feel Amanda’s eyes on him but he didn’t look up, concentrating on cutting through the pile of beans.
He tried to organise his thoughts again. He imagined the various pockets of people out there, all going about their evening affairs, disparate and yet all part of a city which, until now, had somehow passed him by. Svritsky – did he even have a family, Richard wondered – and the Mozambican in the bar, the masseuse, the man on the motorbike, all the people who had passed unseen beneath his gaze. His consciousness had expanded so suddenly that it had seemed to explode.
‘I wandered into an interesting bar the other day,’ he said, addressing David but aware that Coetzee was listening. ‘I was the only white guy there.’ David put down his fork, looking wary. ‘It made me think about what it really means to be African. What it means to live in this country we call our own.’ He paused and filled Coetzee’s glass, making eye contact. ‘The place raised some difficult questions …’
Coetzee grunted, forcing a large forkful of dripping food into his mouth.
‘What kind of questions?’ David asked. Richard noted with relief that Amanda wasn’t listening and had returned to her discussion with Kristi. Cynthia was looking at him, but it was not clear that she was concentrating.
‘Ag, you know, about what we really know about living in Africa,’ he continued. ‘Questions about who the immigrants in this country really are—’
‘T … I … A.’ Coetzee interrupted Richard’s musing in a loud voice. ‘You know. “This Is Africa”. There is no solution,
boet
. Just the problem. And the only answer to the problem – TIA. That’s it,
boet
. No more, no less.’
Richard baulked. ‘Oh please,’ he said with more vehemence than he had intended. ‘That’s such a stupid phrase.’ His voice echoed in the dining room. Amanda’s cutlery clattered on her plate and someone gasped at her end of the table. Cynthia’s hand was frozen halfway to her glass and she looked as if she wanted to throw up. Raine had turned on the couch, watching for the first time with interest.
‘That’s just … I don’t know what,’ Richard continued, exasperated. ‘It’s some bullshit Hollywood throwaway line. People think it’s cool because a wanker like DiCaprio says it and gets away with it. But what the hell does it mean? What the hell does he – or you – know about this continent? Or care.’
Coetzee had turned puce, the veins on the side of his forehead pulsing. Richard thought his dinner guest might throw his wine at him or try to hit him. He couldn’t bear to sit at the same table for one more second. He knew he should apologise and felt his wife’s thin expectations gathering strength. Soon they would hold him like ship’s rope. He was in danger of detonating with frustration.
He stood up quickly, his chair scraping back on the wooden floor. ‘Sorry, I meant all of us,’ he said. ‘What do
we
know about this continent … I need some air.’ He strode past them, pushing through the side door and out into the fresh night air. No one followed him.
There was a tense silence, followed by a contrite apology from Amanda: ‘My God, Ryno, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s got into him. Just ignore him.’
There was some muttered response. As Richard moved away from the house he heard David’s voice: ‘Jeez, Amanda, when did your old man become such a bleeding-heart liberal, hey girl?’ Someone answered, and laughter, forced and ragged, swept out into the garden. Stilted conversation started up again.
Richard moved further away into the night. The air was still and smelt of cut grass and chlorinated pools. A peacock called out loudly, a plaintive cry that resounded across the entire estate.
‘Fuck off, you stupid bird,’ he growled, kicking at the stone chips underfoot.
Traffic rumbled in the distance and a cricket chirped nearby. He could just make out the line of the mountain against the moonless sky, a jagged shape that dipped and rose in crags. Inside his domain, behind the high fence and the security perimeter, among the oak trees and swans, his life was a fiction, a tamed version of living. Risk and inconvenience had been banished, and life followed a predictable and safe pattern. What had Svritsky said? Repetition is not living. The mountain, the people, the traffic, that was all outside. He was a cartoon character trapped in a bowl, rubbing his nose against the glass as he watched the distorted images of reality flicker around him. He wished, ridiculously, that Abayomi were there with him. He longed for her presence, the sense of another world that she carried with her. They hadn’t spoken much during the session, but he knew that she would captivate them, and decimate their small-minded views. She would expose Coetzee and his tawdry wife. She would shine, statuesque, and sweep the cluttered table clean, leaving David gawking in undisguised marvel. And he, Richard, would laugh aloud, with real mirth and delight. How strange it was to feel so passionate about a stranger.
An ambulance siren slowly peeled away on the highway. Two women were walking on the other side of the security fencing, talking animatedly in Xhosa. One started to laugh so much that they had to stop while she bent down, holding on to one of the bars of the gating, great whooping bursts of laughter bounding away into the night.