The Impostor (12 page)

Adam feels both pity and distaste at these moments; he isn’t good with lugubrious confession. But at the same time, he is eager to hear about Baby. The questions he has put to her about herself, her past, have mostly gone unanswered. It seems to be a perverse part of the game between them that she keeps herself mysterious. So he has to rely on whatever Canning tells him to learn anything about her.

As time goes by and their ambiguous connection grows, Canning lets slip a few painful truths. There is the admission one evening, while they’re watching the lion eating a fresh carcass in its enclosure, that he and Baby no longer sleep together. In the beginning, he tells Adam, there was quite a lot of passion, but after they got married, Baby didn’t want to touch him any more. There were a few stray encounters, but one night she had pushed him away definitively, and it had just never happened again.

‘Why not?’ Adam says. ‘What are her reasons? What does she say?’

‘We don’t discuss it.’

‘You never bring it up?’

‘No. It’s too painful, Nappy.’ Some of that pain is evident in Canning’s eyes now; he blinks rapidly to get rid of tears. ‘I do try my luck still sometimes,’ he adds sadly, ‘but it never works.’

Despite himself, Adam is touched both by sympathy and a treacherous stab of joy, quickly concealed. And Canning himself is afraid he’s revealed too much. On the walk back to the lodge from the lion’s enclosure, he suddenly says, ‘Nappy…what I told you just now. It stays between us, okay?’

‘Of course, Canning. That goes without saying.’

‘Thank you.’ He puts a hand on Adam’s shoulder, and the heat of his palm is like the secret brand of friendship. ‘I haven’t shared that with anybody else, Nappy. Not anybody in the whole world!’

‘I’m glad you feel you can confide in me, Canning.’

‘I do, Nappy. I trust you completely.’

Which must be true, because other revelations follow on, just a week later. This time the honesty is fuelled by alcohol. The two of them are sitting around the fire under the oak tree, after their usual Saturday night meal. Baby has disappeared, into the lodge or back to the
rondawel
. Canning throws another log onto the coals, and the flames jump up, throwing shadows, gigantic and distorted, across the grass. From the roof, the silent peacocks observe. After a long silence he tells Adam, ‘You know, her name isn’t really Baby.’

This announcement has been offered up freely, leading on from nothing that went before. Adam freezes, afraid to move in case it stops Canning from unburdening himself.

‘She chose that name because of a character on television. A soap opera, I think. She liked the character because…oh, I don’t remember. All of it,’ he says, his voice rising suddenly to a pitch of pain, ‘all of it is a big, rotten lie!’

Adam has never seen such raw emotion in him before. A pause follows, in which Canning’s breathing calms down, and his body seems somehow to shrink. Then he says quietly, ‘I’m part of it too. I cover for her. I keep up the pretence.’

Adam finally stirs himself, unsticking his dry lips from each other. It seems safe by now to speak. ‘But what’s the pretence?’

A shiver goes through Canning, but the truth is pouring forth easily now, almost without effort. ‘When I first met her,’ he says, ‘she was working as a call-girl in Jo’burg. That story of hers, about how we met socially, through a mutual friend–it isn’t true. Or it’s only true in a certain way. A
euphemistic
way.’

‘Really?’ Adam says. His attempt at quiet neutrality fails him; he can hear the shock in his own voice.

Canning must hear it too, because he glances worriedly at Adam and immediately starts to retreat. ‘Please understand, Nappy, she wasn’t a common street whore. No, she worked for an escort service. Quite a high-class place.’

‘I’m not…I’m not passing judgement.’

‘And she had things to overcome. I promise you, Nappy, her early life was terrible. I could tell you stories that would make you cry. She comes from a hard place. She had a bad, tough start. She’s travelled a long way in her life.’

‘I believe you,’ Adam says, and he does. All kinds of unexplained details are falling into place–the way she speaks, that held, controlled, fabricated voice of no fixed abode. Or the occasional flash of an underlying hardness in her face, little splashes of vulgarity now and then. But more than anything else, it’s the secrecy that makes sense: her need to conceal everything about the past.

‘Please, please,’ Canning says, very concerned now, ‘don’t think less of her. Don’t let this change the way you see her.’

‘It won’t.’ But of course it changes everything; he will never see her in the same way again.

‘Because she really is remarkable, Nappy. If you only knew everything…my wife is amazing.’

‘I know she is.’

And, for the first time, it seems true. Adam doesn’t feel alienated from her: on the contrary, a kinship between them has been strengthened. He is not the only one whose connection to Canning is built on lies; he is not the only impostor. But the burning curiosity he had felt about her has suddenly faded; he’s not sure he wants to know all the tacky details of her life. He can imagine only too well what such a story might involve: the upward struggle out of poverty, the ruthless reliance on her beauty to create opportunities for herself, the sordid rooms and squalid situations she would have passed through…No, it is better not to hear all that. It is possible, he thinks, to spoil everything. It is possible to know too much.

For some reason, there is only one question that still seems urgently important. ‘Tell me,’ he says, leaning forward to put a hand on Canning’s arm, ‘what is her real name?’

Canning looks at him and opens his mouth to answer, but at this moment Baby emerges from the lodge and comes walking towards them. She passes across one of the lights on the front
stoep
, and for an instant her body is a dark mass in silhouette, impossible to measure; then she is just a woman again, diminutive and gorgeous and angry. She throws herself down into a chair.

‘What are you two talking about?’ she says.

‘Nothing,’ Canning says.

And it’s as if they have, in fact, been talking about nothing.

11

Summer waxes to its height. The daylight seems perpetually fixed at noon. On the hills outside town a fire breaks out and it burns for days, casting a pall of smoke across the sun, glowing red at night like a weird galaxy hanging low in the firmament. The end of the year comes, and the coloured lights, left hanging on the streetlamps from the previous season, are switched on. There’s a great deal of public drunkenness. Fanie Prinsloo’s hotel advertises a gut-buster Christmas platter. The staff at the supermarket in town wear festive paper hats and some of the windows in the main street are garnished with glitter and cheap ornaments. But these little pockets of enforced jollity only emphasize the sun-stricken emptiness of the dirt roads beyond, and the melancholy distances spreading away to the horizon.

A few days before Christmas there is a knock on the back door. It’s the first time since his unexpected visit that the blue man has approached so directly, but he’s not coming to stay. Instead, with an air of coy embarrassment, he works his way up to asking whether Adam might be free on Christmas Day. ‘Because I’ve got this big turkey I’m going to cook, and I thought you might like…’

‘Oh, I can’t, I’m sorry,’ Adam says quickly. ‘I’m going to be with my friends.’

‘
Ja, ja
, I thought so…I know you’re away every weekend…but I just took a chance.’

‘Thank you very much. I would’ve liked that.’

‘
Ja
, well. Another time.’ Blom glares at him with sorrowful accusation. ‘You still haven’t come to see my poems.’

‘Your poems?’

‘You remember, I told you…’

‘Yes, I do remember. I’ll come over soon, I promise. I’ve just been very busy.’ He does have a vague recollection, somewhere in a previous conversation, of this enigmatic talk about poems, but he has no desire to pay his neighbour a visit. He experiences an odd flash of anger towards this old man, advertising his loneliness so awkwardly at the back door. But as the blue figure plods away, he looks so solitary and vulnerable that Adam feels guilty. Blom sitting by himself, eating his turkey: it’s an image to wring the heart.

Adam has been invited to spend a few days out at Gondwana, from Christmas to New Year. He has been looking forward to it as a quiet, private idyll, away from the false festivity in the town. But when the time comes, it turns out to be raucous, with a great deal of alcohol flowing. Sipho Moloi is there with his wife, and another couple, Enoch and Ruth Nandi. There is a lot of laughter and back-slapping, a lot of blue cocktails being passed around. For the first time Baby seems actually to enjoy herself; she becomes voluble and animated, but Adam is subdued. He even considers going back to town.

By the time New Year rolls around, some of the revelry has thinned out. Sipho and his wife have departed; only the Nandis are left. On the stroke of midnight Canning asks everybody to raise their glasses to the great year that lies ahead, and all of them look at each other with a significance through which the promise of future prosperity runs like a lode of silver.

All except Adam. He doesn’t understand the endless arcane whispers about business, none of which appear to manifest in any obvious progress. Quite the opposite: everything around him seems stalled and suspended, waiting for release.

The party breaks up at about two in the morning. On the way to bed, Adam stops to look at the occasional flare of headlamps in the sky, a surreal sight which never fails to mesmerize him. A moment or two later Canning slaps a limp arm around his shoulders and Adam catches a familiar whiff of that strong personal smell–sweat and aftershave.

‘Ah, Nappy,’ he says. ‘My old friend. It feels so right that you’re around to watch all of this come together.’

‘What’s been holding you up?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, the game farm is set and ready. It just needs to be re-stocked, as far as I can see. Why all the scheming and plotting?’

‘The game farm? I don’t follow you.’ Canning blinks and then his expression changes, becoming shifty and shrewd. ‘But I’m not making a game farm.’

‘You’re not? But I thought…’

‘No. I have big plans, Nappy. But not in that direction.’

‘Well, what then?’

‘I can’t tell you yet. But I will, very soon. We’re just waiting for a few bureaucratic gears to shift. Land to be rezoned and so forth.’

‘Rezoned as what?’

For a second, Canning hesitates. His expression strains in the direction of confession, then snaps back into place. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he says again. ‘Not yet.’

But very soon afterwards, he does.

Canning has mentioned several times that he wants to take Adam on a special walk, to the source of the river. This will mean a difficult hike into the mountains, through water a lot of the way. The idea of it is intimidating, and they have kept putting it off. But one weekend towards the end of January, Canning is fired up with the notion of tackling the river. It’s not clear why the prospect has taken such firm hold all of a sudden, but Adam agrees that Saturday will be a good day.

They are up just before dawn, heading into the
kloof
. The departure point is the pool where Adam swam the first morning. It had seemed to him then that the river arrived fully formed, but once they have crossed the first barrier of stones, they find themselves following a blue road between high grey walls. There are places where they can step on rocks, but in between they must wade or swim. Sometimes the water is shallow, sometimes it is chest deep. It is cold and powerful, and the effect of so much noise and force, rushing relentlessly against them, is both exhilarating and terrifying. It seems possible that anything might happen: the earth could close on them, or a giant wave could roll down the gorge.

Although they are constantly toiling uphill, the mountains climb higher and higher around them, till eventually they are in a narrow channel, with the sky a shining strip far above. The current is so strong that Adam fears he might lose his footing and be carried back all the way to where he started. But they emerge at last, over a stone lip, into a wide, dark pool, almost a lake, which lies very still in a basin of rock, like a huge eye staring up at the sun. It isn’t possible to go further. The mountain walls have come together; they are at the very top of the
kloof
.

‘But where does the water come from?’ Adam says.

‘In there.’ Canning points to the far edge of the pool. There is an overhang in the cliff, and underneath it the water and the shadow close into one. From this cave the river wells up, without appearing to move.

Adam shivers. He had expected something different: a bubbling fountain bursting out of the ground, something clear and harmless. But this place is somehow sinister. He can imagine too vividly the dark subterranean tunnels, winding deeper and deeper under the mountains, towards some echoing, ultimate womb.

It has been their plan to picnic here, but there is nowhere pleasant or friendly to sit. They cast around among the dripping stones, till Canning looks up and spies a ledge, halfway up the side of the rock wall. ‘What about there?’ he says.

They have to climb. It’s not as sheer as it looks, and there are crevices and footholds along the way, but a fall would be potentially fatal. Adam is fitter and more agile than Canning, and he arrives at the ledge a full couple of minutes in the lead. It’s been worth the effort: there is sun up here, and a spectacular view, and he settles himself to wait.

As Canning comes up, wheezing and panting, it happens. His foot slips, he loses his grip, his eyes widen in fear. He is actually in the act of falling. The drop underneath him at this point is smooth and deep, with jagged rocks at the bottom. For an instant, time stands still. Then Adam’s hand shoots out and grabs hold of Canning’s hand; he pulls him up to safety.

It takes a few moments for Canning to speak. Then all he can say is, ‘Thank you.’

Adam nods. They are behaving calmly, with small words and gestures, but they both have a sense of an utterly different future flashing past them and away. In this other branch of fate, Canning falls, and everything that follows on is different. But the moment passes, marked by the smallest of exchanges.

‘I think you might have saved my life there,’ Canning says.

‘I think I might.’

Then they are sitting side by side on the ledge, two middle-aged men drying off in the sun. They are both wearing shorts and running shoes; their T-shirts have been put away in a small backpack that Canning carries. Adam casts a furtive sideways look at his companion, to compare. Canning’s body is flabby and pale, a little endomorphic and sexless, his big belly overhanging his shorts. Next to him, Adam feels lean and thin; he feels almost desirable.

‘Isn’t this something?’ Canning says.

They have a view not only down into the stony hollow in the mountains, but over the top of a ridge to the simmering plains in the distance. The world is both rising and falling around them.

‘How did you find this place?’

‘I came here with Lindile,’ Canning says. ‘You know, my first–’

‘Your first black friend, yes.’ Adam is irritated by these constant references to a halcyon, unfallen time.

Canning doesn’t seem to notice. But perhaps he is more aware than he shows. After they have settled themselves properly, and unpacked their picnic lunch from the backpack and have sunk into a contented midday reverie, he suddenly says, ‘Enjoy this while you can. It’s not going to last much longer.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There are big changes coming here, Nappy. It’s about to happen at last.’

‘What is?’

Canning is halfway through eating a sandwich; he puts it down and wipes his mouth, but there are still stray crumbs clinging to his lips. ‘I’m turning this place into a golf course,’ he says.

‘Excuse me?’

But the only answer is a nod: solemn and determined.

Adam laughs. It’s a hollow sound, reverberating in the rocky basin. But as the resonances die away, he understands how unfunny this proposal is. His mind is going backwards, through the preceding months, making sense of little unexplained moments and details. He has assumed that all of it–the business talk, the secret letters and visits from people like Sipho Moloi–is about getting the game farm up and running again, but now he realizes: it’s about replacing the game farm with something else.

‘Canning,’ he says. ‘You can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘This place…the farm…it’ll be completely ruined.’

‘Yes.’

‘But why would you want to do that?’

‘Revenge,’ Canning says.

‘Revenge on who?’

‘You know who, Nappy. You know better than anybody.’ Canning leans towards him, and for a second Adam sees his own image, dually reflected in the other man’s eyes. ‘Remember what you told me,’ he says.

For a nauseating instant the truth wells up in Adam’s mouth, ready to be disgorged.
No
, he wants to say,
I don’t remember what I told you, I don’t remember any of it, not even who you were
. But he doesn’t speak and Canning prattles on, oblivious.

‘Of course it’s not just revenge. I have healthy capitalist instincts too, I’ll make a lot of money out of the deal.’ Almost by reflex, he touches his pockets when he says the word ‘money’, but he’s carrying no small change today. ‘I love this place too, in my own way. You know that–you’ve seen it. But in the end, it still belongs to my father. It’s his big dream, not mine.’ His voice drops, taking on a dreamy quality of its own. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I sometimes imagine my old man, looking down at me. I know that’s not possible, but I imagine it anyway. I like to think of how helpless and furious he feels when he sees my black wife. I like to think of his rage and despair when he sees this place in my hands. And I go to sleep happy at night when I think of how I’ll dismantle his dream. Bit by bit, piece by piece. I’m going to savour every second of it.’

This has been spoken so simply that it cancels out any reply. And as revenge, it can hardly be bettered. The vision of a primitive, barbaric landscape will be completely wiped out. In its place there will be a sculpted, artificial fantasy of fair-ways and bunkers and putting greens, planted with little flags. Desolation flowers briefly in Adam. The emptiness, the spiritual vapidity, are hard to express; the word that comes to him is
desecration
.

But he doesn’t say that. Instead he mutters, ‘It’s the wrong terrain, surely…? Too dry and hot.’

‘They played golf on the moon, Nappy, you know that? They play golf in the snow, with red balls. You can play golf just about anywhere. You need grass for the tees and the greens, but otherwise you can use almost any terrain. And here the plan is to make the semi-desert conditions a
feature
of the course.’ Canning warms to his theme; there’s no stopping him now. ‘Look, you need about a hundred and thirty hectares to make a twenty-seven hole course. We’ve easily got that in land that fronts the river. So the course will be designed near to the water. Oh, and guess who’s designing it for us?’ He speaks a name triumphantly that means nothing to Adam. When he gets no reaction, he says, ‘He’s very famous, Nappy. One of the best-known golfers in the world.’