The Impostor (6 page)

Between the houses, Adam glimpses a low huddle of figures playing some kind of gambling game in the dirt. It is hardly a glorious vision of the future, but he says nothing till they pass the settlement and come to a high fence with a gate and a big sign.

‘This is yours? You own a game farm?’

‘It was my father’s dream,’ Canning says, ‘not mine.’ He has stopped by the gate and he hoots three times, peremptorily. From a concrete building nearby a guard in khaki uniform emerges, wearing a revolver on his hip. There are other khaki figures visible behind him, also armed. The guard hurries to open the gate for them and they bump across a cattle grid and through to the other side. Then they are speeding along a dirt road between
koppies
and termite hills and jumbled boulders, all fired in the copper glow of the late sun. An extraordinary vista opens up around them. It has the look and feel of a rough, unpeopled wilderness, except for a line of telephone poles and a collection of farm buildings that appear to one side. Adam assumes that this must be where Canning lives, but as they get closer he sees that the homestead is abandoned. More than that: the roof has caved in, the walls have been torn down, so that he glimpses the interior rooms through shattered masonry as they sweep past it and on.

‘Where is your father, Nappy?’ Canning asks him.

Adam is taken by surprise. ‘Uh, he’s dead, actually. He died a few years ago, not long after my mother.’

‘Yes,’ Canning says. ‘They do die in the end.’ His tone is smug and victorious. ‘What did he do, your father?’

‘He was an engineer.’

‘He was good to you?’

‘Yes, he was good to everybody. He was a nice man.’

Canning says angrily, ‘That’s lucky for you.’

They drive on in silence, the dust a taste and texture in Adam’s mouth. The road they’re on is a good one, in the very lee of the mountains, though other rough roads branch off from it, heading across the plain. After about ten minutes they make a sharp turn, and then everything is different. A cleft opens in the side of the mountains, a long sward of green that glows brilliantly against the dark stone. There is the smell and feel of water. And then the sight of it–a flickering glimpse of a river through trees. The vegetation is vivid and dense, rising in vertical waves. It is shocking, all this verdant profusion, after the epic emptiness they’ve been driving through. It’s like a tropical island that has been towed in from somewhere else and moored incongruously here.

The road climbs into the cool green, the high mountain walls narrowing on either side. They pass through another fence, a gate. Nearby is a labourer’s cottage, with chickens and dogs running around. The road veers away, towards a huge building under a thatched roof, bright patterns daubed onto its outside walls. Around it is a cluster of
rondawels
, in the same
faux
-African style. The road fades out into a glimmering lake of lawn, freshly mowed and clipped, studded with trees.

The place is very strange. It is like an old colonial dream of refinement and exclusion, which should have vanished when the dreamer woke up. But here it is, solid and permanent, its windows burning with friendly light–or perhaps the reflection of the lowering sun. It is the very end of the afternoon, pale and pleasant, and through the elongated shadows on the grass a single peacock is carefully stepping.

‘Gondwana,’ Canning murmurs.

‘What?’

‘That’s what my old man called it, the pretentious old cunt.’

As they walk across the lawn towards the building, the peacock lets out a heart-ripping cry.

The first time he sees her: they come around the corner and she is standing on the grass, her back to them. The sun is going down in a spectacular arterial sewage of colour, but she appears indifferent to the display. She seems rapt in some private fantasy, holding a long suede coat closed around her body, despite the heat. She hears them and turns. Under the coat she is wearing a short, shimmery blue dress, and her legs are very long. Although her feet are bare, it’s as if she’s wearing high heels. Even before he sees the bright paint on her face, Adam has a flash of the woman on the road outside the town, selling herself. She seems to have been transported here, garish and gorgeous and improbable.

Once that first image fades, he sees past it to how beautiful she is. She is like an exotic doll, all her tiny features in immaculate proportion. She’s also young; at least ten years younger than Canning–which means ten years younger than Adam too.

‘My wife, Baby,’ Canning says. ‘Baby, this is Nappy.’

She holds out her hand. He can feel her long nails in his palm. The sensation lets something loose in him–distaste mixed with desire. He holds her fingers for a second longer than is necessary.

‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ she says. ‘My husband has talked about you so many times.’

Her voice is low, husky, a little disinterested. The accent is neutral and rootless, hard to place. Her eyes linger on him for a moment, summing him up, before dismissing him.

‘What do you think?’ Canning says proudly. ‘I told you my wife is amazing.’

‘Yes,’ Adam murmurs. He doesn’t know what else to say. It’s true: she is amazing–though perhaps not in the way that Canning means. And what kind of a name is Baby?

‘I’m just going to show Nappy around.’

‘Yes, do,’ she says.

But Canning doesn’t move. He stands there, smiling fixedly, appearing almost desperate, staring at his wife as if he’s the one who’s just met her. She pulls the coat tighter around herself and gives a languid little shrug, before turning around and gazing into the distance. Only then, with a discernible effort, does Canning set himself in motion. Adam follows him the last few steps into the big building, both of them casting a backward glance towards the singular figure, standing alone on the grass.

Now they have walked into a tall, sepulchral space, in which Adam’s eyes have to adjust. He sees constituent elements before he sees the whole: slate floors, high conical roof, prints of wildlife paintings on the walls, between signboards with names on them like
reception
,
wellness centre
,
conference rooms
. It feels as if it should be jammed with people, but the place is empty. The sound of their feet quavers coldly around them.

‘What is this? A game lodge?’

‘There you are. Right first time.’

Other details are coming to him now: animal heads mounted on the wall. A fireplace framed by two gleaming white tusks, a zebra-skin spread out on the floor in front of it.

‘But where are the people?’

‘Well, we’re here, aren’t we?’

Canning seems to be enjoying Adam’s confusion. He leads his guest down some stairs towards a bar, fully stocked with drinks. Through a set of doors to one side, Adam sees a kitchen in which there is a flurry of menial activity. ‘No, no,’ Canning says, when Adam holds out the wine he’s brought along. ‘Put that away. Let me mix you one of my lethal little cocktails. It took me years to get the formula just right.’ He concocts a toxic-looking, bright blue mixture and dispenses it into two tall glasses, giving one to Adam. ‘Cheers,’ he says. ‘Here’s to old friends!’

‘Old friends,’ Adam says, and drinks.

‘Are you surprised by my wife?’ Canning asks abruptly.

‘Surprised? No. Why would I be?’

‘Well. Because she’s black, for one thing.’

‘But who cares about that?’

That is, in fact, the least surprising thing about her.

‘We’re a new South African couple,’ Canning says.

Adam feels irritated. There is nothing very new, or even especially unusual, about having a black spouse these days, and it seems gratuitous to be harping on it. Though it’s also true that Canning isn’t your typical modern South African man. But the surprise is connected to Canning, not Baby, and it’s as if he himself recognizes this fact when his tone changes suddenly, from pride to panic:

‘I love my wife, Nappy. I love her very badly! I don’t want to give her up.’

Afterwards, when Adam remembers this conversation, it is that one word, ‘badly’, which stands out for him. How can you love somebody
badly
? But he says, in a soothing voice, ‘You don’t have to give her up, do you?’

Canning is sunk in gloom now, as if the twilight has affected him. But then his mood switches again. ‘Come with me,’ he says. ‘There’s something special I want to show you.’

The light is fading as they go back out onto the lawn. Adam looks, but Baby has disappeared. Canning leads him away from the complex, in the direction of the river. They pass in silence through concentric rings of cultivation that radiate outwards, each one a little wilder and more unkempt than the last. There is an orchard, and below that an open field, churned-up and broken, in which nothing has been planted. Then a wall of trees goes up, complex and knotted, lush with the proximity to water. Along the way, Adam sees the greeny-blue, outrageous shapes of peacocks everywhere.

‘What is it with the birds?’

‘My father had a thing for them. He started out with two, but they kept multiplying.’

‘Your father built this place, then?’

Canning doesn’t answer. It’s almost dark, and Adam doesn’t want to go into the forest. But Canning takes him along the edge of the trees, to the top of a high bank, which looks down on a large, sunken pit, enclosed by a wall. An arena of some kind. They stand, looking down into gloomy vegetable growth. A smell rises to them, rank and unfathomable.

‘This was going to be the swimming pool,’ Canning says. ‘But it’s been put to another use in the meantime. How about that?’

‘What?’

But then he sees it. Or rather: he sees the eyes. They are luminous and yellow, apparently disembodied, as if the undergrowth is gazing at him. He takes a step back.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he says. ‘Is that…?’

Yes, it is. He can see the body now, behind the glowing stare. He has an involuntary urge to run, but he holds himself in place.

Canning says smugly, ‘It’s a lion. My father’s little pet.’

‘But why is it here?’

‘He wasn’t going to keep it here. Not permanently. There was a whole family, a what do you call it, a
pride
of them that were going to be let loose out there.’ He gestures at the surrounding dimness. ‘This is the last one.’

‘What happened to the others?’

‘I sold them,’ Canning says. ‘To hunters and circuses. I’ll get rid of this one too, eventually. But it’s kind of fun to keep him in the meantime.’

At this moment two workers appear, wearing the same khaki uniforms as the guard at the gate. They are carrying between them a dripping sack, which they drag to the edge of the enclosure. Below them, in the crepuscular blue, the lion has started to pace: back and forth, up and down, a restless power with nowhere to go. The workers look across at Canning. He makes a lazy gesture of assent, like a Roman emperor at a circus. The workers lift their sack and tip it, and into the pit there tumbles a slurry of red meat and bones–the carcass, whatever it is, that Adam saw in the back of the
bakkie
this morning.

The lion doesn’t approach immediately. It continues its pacing, stopping every now and then to look balefully up at the two spectators. The workers fold up their sack and leave. It is all inexplicable: Adam is surrounded by a mystery, which seems to centre on the odd man standing next to him, sipping loudly on his blue cocktail. He feels as if he’s fallen through a hole into another world.

‘I don’t understand,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘This. This whole place.’ He gestures at what’s around them.

‘Ah.’ Canning takes him literally. ‘It’s a bit of a geographical freak. Something to do with the mountains, a sort of micro-climate in the
kloof
, volcanic minerals in the soil, an aquifer, condensation…’ He breaks off irritably. ‘I don’t know, Nappy. It’s here, isn’t that enough?’

‘I wasn’t talking about the
kloof
.’

‘Well, what then?’

He says again, ‘The whole place.’

‘Ah,’ Canning says. ‘Right. Well, that’s a long story. But I’ll try to make it short.’

Adam waits. Below them, the lion has started to eat. There is the sound of tearing, followed by guttural swallowing.

‘Basically,’ Canning tells him, ‘this was my father’s big dream. His whole life he worked towards only one thing–his game park. He saved money and bought different farms and patched them together. Forty years, it took him. And just when it all came together–bang! A major coronary.’

‘Leaving it to you?’

‘My father and I hadn’t spoken since I left school. A few decades of silence. So it wasn’t his plan to leave it to me, no. But he hadn’t made a will and he had no other heirs. My mother died when she was giving birth to me, as you know. So I was the next one in line. It took them months to track me down. And of course it changed my whole life. My business was folding, I was on the edge of losing everything. Then this. A whole new start. Magic! That was three years ago, and I haven’t looked back. My father would rather have torched this place than let me have it, but there you are.’ Canning sniggers. ‘Typical of him not to plan for the future. He really imagined he would never die.’