The Impostor (11 page)

The cynicism of this last comment takes Adam by surprise; but only because it comes from Canning. He seems so given to flowery declarations of hope and happiness that these little dark asides are shocking. But as time goes by and they get to know each other better, Adam becomes more used to the two warring extremes of Canning’s nature. He will hold forth sentimentally on some topic and then, an instant later, the sentiment will turn inside out, becoming abrasive and nasty. His alternating moods of buoyancy and bleakness sometimes follow on so quickly from each other that he seems like two different people joined together.

Almost nothing seems exempt from this withering counterpoint. He frequently goes from rhapsodizing about what a wonderful place the new South Africa is to denouncing it as a den of vice and violence in the next breath. But he is just as equivocal on the subject of people. Many of the visitors to Gondwana are described in glowing terms, then immediately written off as corrupt or inept. Even Baby swings between being amazing and cruel in Canning’s emotional vocabulary.

The one subject on which he never shows ambivalence is his father. His feelings there are clean and simple. His father was–and is–a looming, hateful presence, fixed forever in antipathy towards him. It’s up to Adam to pick up the contradictions.

‘Tell me about this place,’ he says to Canning one day. ‘You said it was your father’s big dream. Why? I mean, what was he trying to do here?’

A heaviness comes over Canning, pressing him down. ‘I don’t know how to explain,’ he says.

‘Try.’

‘He didn’t like other people much, my father. After my mother died, he hated the world even more. Me first and foremost. I think what he wanted was to live in the middle of a huge wilderness, with no people around. Animals, plants, the mountains, the sky–he had this fantasy of himself alone here in nature. He wanted to restore this place to the way it might’ve looked. You know, before the modern world arrived.’

‘Gondwana.’

‘Exactly. He did research, he found out what animals and plants used to be here, before people moved through and destroyed it all. He was trying to stock it with those same species, as far as he could. If he had a way to resurrect the dinosaurs, he would’ve done that too.’ Canning mulls on this thought for a while, then his face loosens into familiar sentiment. ‘The old bastard,’ he says softly, more to himself than anything. But for once, in speaking of his father, there is a discernible trace of longing in his voice.

Now the contradictions in Canning seem to extend backwards, to the shadowy figure of his father behind him. Adam has tried, but he doesn’t understand. ‘Why did he hate you?’ he asks, judging that Canning might be in the mood to talk.

‘Because I was fat and useless. Well, you remember how I was. I wasn’t the most virile and manly of chaps. He hated weakness, my old man. He couldn’t take anything that smelled needy or vulnerable. And I was, as a child. I didn’t have a mother, of course.’

‘You said she died giving birth to you?’

‘Yes. I suppose that’s really why he hated me, if you want the truth. He couldn’t forgive me for killing her, and then surviving.’ He reflects, with emotion that turns into perspicacious calm. ‘Actually, he would’ve probably hated me anyway, whoever I was. That’s just the way of it. He loved my mother and when she was gone, there was no love left. Only hate.’

‘But this place,’ Adam persists. ‘It doesn’t really fit with his fantasy, does it? He was hardly going to be alone here. He built the lodge, the
rondawels
…he was counting on lots of visitors.’

‘Yes. Well. He was a dreamer, but he was also pragmatic. He had to make the dream pay for itself. But he would’ve kept away.’

‘How? He would’ve been in the thick of it.’

‘Not really. You haven’t seen his house yet.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ll show you,’ Canning says. ‘Next weekend.’

And he does. Though Adam doesn’t mention it again, on his next visit Canning leads him into the forest behind the lodge. Adam thinks at first that he’s being taken to the pool where he swam on the first morning, but they are following a different path, one that comes out at a crooked, crude, tiny house, set at the base of the mountains and made of their same stone, so that it seems to fade into the backdrop. It’s like a house in a fairy-tale: a witch’s cottage at the heart of the woods.

‘There,’ Canning says. ‘I grew up in that house.’

‘But this is incredible. I had no idea it was here.’

‘That’s how he wanted it. While the game farm ran itself down there, he was going to live up here, out of sight.’

And Adam can see how that might be possible. The mountains, the thick trees: they ring the clearing, closing it off, turning it into an island.

‘Who lives here now?’

‘Nobody. It’s stood empty since he died.’

‘Can we go in?’

‘Go ahead if you like. It isn’t locked. But I’ll stay here.’

Canning hangs back with such a palpable air of dread and revulsion that Adam’s curiosity feels like betrayal. ‘Another time,’ he says.

Before they head off into the forest again, Canning looks around at the cleared space. ‘My mother’s ashes are scattered here,’ he says. He tries to speak off-handedly, but his voice catches in his throat; for a second he squeaks like an adolescent.

He does go inside the cottage not long afterwards, but not with Canning. Instead it’s Baby who shows him around, like a sardonic guide with a tourist. On almost every weekend that he visits Gondwana, Adam is left alone with Baby at some point. Canning is frequently occupied with business arrangements: there are visitors like Sipho Moloi dropping by, or private telephone calls that have to be made, or letters to be written, or meetings taking place. There are oblique references to contracts and ‘understandings’, often featuring the mysterious Mr Genov. None of this is properly explained, and Adam assumes all of it is connected with getting the game farm up and running again. Part of the reason he doesn’t ask is that his attention is elsewhere: when Canning is occupied like this, he always palms Adam off on Baby.

On the first few occasions they just sit around talking, her boredom infecting them both. But over time he persuades her to go on little strolls into the woods with him. He takes this as a small victory over her cynical disregard for Beauty. On their third or fourth walk they land up, half by accident, at the crooked cottage at the foot of the cliff.

‘I really want to go inside,’ he tells her.

‘So go. There’s nothing to see, I’ve been in already.’

‘Come on. Please come with me.’

‘Ooh, are you scared?’ she teases him, but then she leads the way. Four rooms with small windows, low ceilings. They pass without speaking through a kitchen, a bathroom, in which there is no gentleness, no trace of decoration. There isn’t a living-room; this is the house of a man who didn’t believe in sitting about. It’s all very bare, very basic. There is also no electricity; half-liquefied candles stand petrified in saucers. Unexplained marks stain the walls, like maps to unknown continents, and an indefinable smell hangs heavy on the air. The place feels distinctly haunted, though that might just be the human relics lying around: a pair of leather boots waits expectantly in the passage, still shaped to the feet which wore them, and a thick coat hangs behind the door, like the outline of a body. There are hats and cups on hooks, and a hunting rifle fixed to the wall.

Adam shivers; the house is creepy. It’s as if the
Oubaas
, Canning’s father, has just stepped outside for a moment and will be returning soon. The air of watchfulness is deepened by multiple glass eyes, all set into the heads of dead and stuffed animals–the surplus, Adam supposes, of the others back at the lodge. There are birds and buck and baboons and even a stray warthog, all mounted on islands of wood in rigid perpetuity. A thronging bestiary, like the menagerie on the ark.

‘He liked to kill things, this guy,’ Adam says.

‘Mmmm.’

‘Did you ever meet him–your father-in-law?’

‘He was already gone when I arrived on the scene. But from what Kenneth says, he’d have shot and stuffed me as well.’

He laughs uneasily at the image of her, preserved amongst the animals.

‘Look at this,’ she says. ‘Kenneth used to sleep here.’

He takes her word for it, though there is nothing to indicate this was a child’s room. A bed, a desk and a cupboard, all empty. The window looks out almost directly onto the cliff, which seals off the view in a blank pane of stone. It is easy to imagine the schoolboy Canning here, at home for the holidays–though it is just as easy to imagine him
not
here, the room cleaned out and used for other things. No, Canning has left no trace; more powerful ghosts are in residence.

And nowhere more so than in the last room. An old double bed with brass rails. The mattress is bare. Almost no other furniture, except for a chest-of-drawers. And on the wall above the bed–very bizarre–the snarling head of a leopard.

‘Imagine,’ she says. ‘Kenneth was made on that bed.’

She has spoken with irony, but the image stays with him. Forty three years ago, the
Oubaas
toiling to his climax between the thighs of his wife. Exactly here, in this spot–the starburst of possible Cannings, only one of which had found its mark.

‘Enough,’ he says, wanting to escape both the mental picture and the place. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

On the walk back to the lodge, neither of them talks. Adam finds himself oddly moved by Canning’s past, which even now he doesn’t fully comprehend. The powerful, raging father; the softer, loving mother–they are like mythical figures, both gone now, between whom the frightened form of the long-ago Canning takes shape. Adam’s mood stays heavy until–just as they emerge from the trees–she puts a hand on his shoulder.

‘Are you all right?’ she says softly.

‘Me? Yes…Yes, I’m fine.’ He smiles at her, a little too brightly.

They have a curious familiarity, the two of them, which springs up only when they’re alone together. Ever since that day when she had asked him to paint her fingernails, there has been an unspoken awareness between them, made–on Adam’s side–from yearning and frustration. What Baby feels isn’t clear, but she is certainly conscious of the effect that she has on him. She will often engineer some kind of physical contact, asking him to massage her shoulders or brush her hair, and these moments stir danger and desire in him. But she will just as quickly lapse into peevishness, treating him like an unwanted intrusion. He has the sense of a game being played out between them, in which both of them are involved, though only she knows the rules.

But then at other moments–like now–she becomes somebody else again: a tender, gentle person, without guile. Something in him opens and turns to her at times like these. But the moment passes; her hand falls away; they hurry on to the lodge.

Canning is waiting for them, pacing up and down on the
stoep
. ‘There you are,’ he cries when he sees them. ‘I was just starting to get worried.’

Canning often worries when they go off on their walks, but his insecurity has nothing to do with jealousy. Rather, he seems to have an irrational fear that his wife will disappear without a trace when he isn’t looking. ‘It’s crazy, I know,’ he confesses to Adam a little later, when they’re alone together, ‘but it feels like something will take her away if I don’t keep watch.’

‘You’re afraid of losing her. But she’s not about to leave you, Canning.’

‘You don’t think so? Oh, thank you for saying that!’

Adam stares at Canning. His new-old friend is a complex and sometimes interesting man, and though certain aspects of him are irritating, there are also deeper reaches of his character, shading off into torment and heartbreak, which draw sympathy.

‘She arrived so suddenly in my life,’ he says. ‘What’s to stop her disappearing just as quickly?’

‘Why would she? She’s happy with you.’

‘Yes, of course she is,’ Canning says musingly, but his face is full of doubt. Then his expression changes. ‘I’m glad you’ve had a chance to get to know her a bit, Nappy. I’m glad you two like each other.’

‘Yes, she’s lovely. I’ve enjoyed spending time with her.’

He nods solemnly, his eyes shining. ‘You two are the people who matter most to me in the world,’ he says. ‘I want you to be friends!’

Baby is the centre and point of Canning’s new life: that much is clear. He talks about her obsessively, usually in exalted, overwrought terms, while a febrile emotion rises in him, like religious fervour. But the dark element to his emotions shows itself too. Often, just after he has spoken about how ‘amazing’ Baby is, or how she has transformed his life, Canning will lapse into brooding introspection, and then start muttering about how unfeeling she is.

Once he tells Adam: ‘I don’t think she notices me at all.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘No, it is true, Nappy. Believe me. Whole days go by sometimes when she doesn’t even speak to me.’

‘Well, she does seem very cut off. From everybody.’

‘But I’m her husband! I’m married to her!’ Canning’s face fills up with anguish. ‘I had a wife and daughter, you know. I destroyed a happy home to be with her. Look here.’ He fumbles for his wallet and takes out a well-handled photograph of a brown-haired woman holding a little girl. She seems, to Adam’s eyes, like the wife he would have imagined for Canning: plump like him, a little plain and weary. ‘Adele,’ he announces. ‘And my little girl, Celeste.’

‘Where are they now?’

‘They’re in Johannesburg. But I don’t see them any more. Adele has custody and she won’t let me near. I’m afraid I didn’t behave very well. I caused a lot of pain.’

Adam hands the photograph back. Canning looks at it for a moment, an indefinable expression on his face, before he puts it away. He says, neutrally, ‘I gave up a lot to be with Baby.’ But a moment later, he relents; he takes Adam by the arm. ‘I hope you don’t mind me talking like this, Nappy. Please understand–I adore her. I would never give her up.’

‘I do understand.’

‘I know you do. You’re my best friend, Nappy. You’re the only person I can talk to like this.’