Broken River Tent Read online

  In the past the town used to be a fearsome symbol of colonial power and febrile activity, where amaXhosa got what was then referred to as ‘kaffir truck’ – useless low-quality goods and rejects from recently industrialised cities in England such as Manchester. Nothing much of Smith’s ingenuity and reign of terror was to be discerned today, Phila observed, as he negotiated the heavy town traffic, which suspended all known rules of the road, among the boisterous bustle and hustle of commercial activity. But equally useless low-quality goods for amaXhosa were still for sale everywhere, only now they came from China and were referred to as amaFongKong. The collective decay of many colonial Eastern Cape towns had caught up with it. Its rusting buildings had the icing-sugary glitz of screaming facades of McDonald’s and KFC. And like the others – PE, Grahamstown – it was rich in symbols of colonial rule on every corner.

  The hotel had something of restrained Edwardian buoyancy to it, and also something of the confused ornamental diversity found in the decadence of the late Victorian age. After checking in, Phila climbed the baronial staircase in urgent anticipation of a bed. Upon entering the room he dropped his bag on the floor, kicked the door closed with the heel of his shoe, and threw himself face down on the bed. He slept obentlombe to wake up only the following day around nine. Already the intensity of the heat was oppressive. One of the reasons he had come to the town was to attend the initiation of a distant cousin of his into a school yobu gqirha, to be a witch-doctor. And then there was the awkward wedding of a friend and former girlfriend. They had sent him the invitation out of guilt, most probably, not expecting he’d be daring enough to attend. But Phila was curious. And daring.

  He took a shower and put on his Sunday best before heading for the wedding ceremony. In fact it was a dull thing. Phila stayed only for the official part and to congratulate the groom and the bride. At least he felt his coming was not a waste of time because it made him realise he no longer believed in petty wars. In Leonard Cohen’s words, the enemy was sleeping, and the woman was free of his thin gypsy heart.

  When he came back to the hotel in the afternoon there was nowhere else to go so he went on a fool’s errand at the bar by the pool. A SYF, with bright hair extensions the colour of the Swedish flag, extreme nails and all, was pretending to be consumed by a chick-lit book while eyeing his every move. There was hardly anyone else around, with the exception of staff members. He took a dip in the pool and went to a shaded corner to read his book. Immersing himself in Kafkaesque internal displacement, bordering on insanity, did not have the effect of escaping into fiction. It made him think about the wrong turns his life had made. The thought had a flattening, desensitising effect, so he directed his mind to the SYF across the pool. He decided to take the bull by the horns. He stopped by her umbrella.

  “I’m going to the bar. Would you like something?”

  Silence. He peered beneath the umbrella and saw that she had dozed off. He took the opportunity to read the title of the book on her bosom: The Bride Stripped Bare. He felt awkward. To leave without arousing her attention now would be suspicious. The barman was already giving him suspicious looks, though pretending to be busy packing glasses. Maybe he was thinking Phila was about to steal from the sleeping woman. He felt no choice but to wake her up, so he lightly kicked her shin, hoping she would not get cross.

  “What is it?” she asked softly, taking her shades off.

  Phila was glad she showed no signs of irritation. “I was just going to the bar to get something to drink and thought you might like something. I didn’t realise you were asleep. Pardon me.” He made to turn with an apology. It worked.

  She gave a faint smile. “Actually, I would like a Manhattan.”

  “Sure. Crushed or on the rocks?”

  “Crushed. Thank you.” She raised herself from the reclining pool chair. “Gee! I didn’t know I was so wiped out.”

  Phila exchanged a couple of perfunctory remarks with the barman before paying for the drinks and hurrying back to the SYF.

  “Here you go – crushed and hopefully balanced.”

  “Much appreciated.”

  She had pellucid eyes. Phila always noticed the eyes first, because he believed them to be the the seat of the personality. He lingered a while to be invited to sit, but then sat down anyway.

  “So? What do people do around here when it is this hot?” he asked. The sun was still baking down, but he didn’t feel presumptuous enough to invade her umbrella space.

  “Stay around the pool and, like, drink piña coladas – or Manhattans, if they are lucky.”

  They both chuckled.

  “That’s the life!” said Phila. He waited a little before extending his hand to introduce himself. “My name is Phila Sobanzi.”

  “Matswane Motleng.” She threw her hand on his.

  She had soft sweaty palms.

  She was not from around here, a good sign, Phila thought.

  “Don’t ask me much about the vibe of this place,” Matswane continued. “I’m, like, 404 when it comes to it. As far as I can tell, the town is dead. I survive on Sillywood here, thanks to my square-headed spouse.” She pointed to her closed iBook next to her chair. “I’ve, like, never watched so many movies in my life. Good thing I kept saving them on my comp.”

  “Good for you!” Phila’s mind raced into decoding the term 404. He was sure he had heard it somewhere (just as he had recently learnt from a Cosmo that SYF meant single young female).

  “Are you staying long in the hotel?” Matswane enquired.

  The position Phila was seated in made him an uncomfortable voyeur each time Matswane opened her legs to cross them. He took uneasy pleasure in it. “Just for the weekend. I came to attend a wedding; a friend getting married to an ex.”

  “Wow! That must have been tough?” She sat up again, and seemed a little restless.

  “Not really.” He remembered that 404 was a web-error message when you ask it to search for certain information and it can’t find it: “404 Not found”. So it must mean clueless, thought Phila.

  “How did it feel?” She focused her gimlet eyes on his face.

  Phila took some time to think about his answer. “Like the hot air you get from a train you’ve just missed, I guess.”

  “Taking it like a philosopher, hey?” She twisted her face to feign pain.

  “I heard somewhere it’s the only profession still left struggling truthfully with its own demons.”

  “I prefer art, so let’s not even go there.”

  “I also heard that art misleads with false unities.”

  “I’ll bookmark that. I’m, like, not aiming at being a saint or something.”

  “That’s too bad. Aims, at least, should be ideal, even if we fall short. Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Mother City. I mean, I’m originally from Tembisa, on the East Rand, now Ekurhuleni, but I work in Cape Town; studied there too. I’ve been staying here for the last three months or so. I work for an actuarial firm. We were hired by the Eastern Cape government.” She spoke English with a Model C accent.

  “An actuary. You don’t see many of those around; certainly not as beautiful.”

  “Really? I understand why. Like, this has been my Elvis year, but I already feel like going postal. I’m tired of Dilberting for an egomaniac old coot whose specs are, like, Pentium 1.”

  “Leave then. Life is too short. One minute you are in love with someone, the next you are marrying them to your friend.”

  “So it does still hurt!” They both laughed again. “I just might do that one of these days. I mean, I’m, like, paid ribs ’n dick compared to the old coot I slave under, yet he delegates everything to me. The chairman founder of the firm is, like, a seagull, flies in now and then from the UK to shit over everything we do and bails as soon as he comes.”

  “How did you get into the field?”

  “I actually went into actuarial science sort of by accident; like a process of elimination, if you like. My mother wa
nted me to be a doctor, but I despise seeing blood, so medicine was out. I couldn’t see myself under a hard hat as an engineer either, as my dad had hoped. But I happened to be good in math and fancied something on the creative side, perhaps architecture.” She laughed. “But I was horrible at drawing.”

  “Oh, architecture’s not about drawing; perhaps a little joining of dots here and there. People tend to confuse architects with draughtsmen. Architects design – they don’t draw.”

  “Now you tell me? Are you an architect, or, like, just an alpha geek?”

  “Well, it depends on what you mean. I was trained in the field of architecture, but I am kind of out of things right now.”

  “Out of things? Get real! What does that mean? Out of a job? I thought there was a great demand for architects and engineers in this country?”

  “Maybe so, but none of it has come my way. It’s mostly been taken by big foreign firms. I think I’m ready to take another dip in the pool now.”

  “Why? Am I blowing your buffer?” She waited for Phila to answer but Phila was already moving towards his corner. “Wait up. I’ll join you.”

  Matswane threw her towel down and Phila noticed that her swimwear revealed more than should be legally allowed – and that blew his buffer. By the way she dived into the pool he saw she was an accomplished swimmer. Phila was not a fish but would not drown when thrown in water. He hated chlorinated water, though, because it gave him a splitting headache when it got into his ears. After three lengths he got out and went to recline in his chair again. Matswane continued swimming for some time. As she walked back to her chair Phila noticed that her nipples had shrunk under her almost-transparent-when-wet swimwear. Cool early evening air began atoning for the sweltering afternoon.

  “I grew up not very far from here,” Phila said. “We always knew, no matter how hot the day was, there’d be this breeze from East London in the early evening to temper the heat, bringing much needed relief.”

  They ordered another drink and moved their chairs together under the umbrella. They continued talking, exchanging tentative details about their respective lives, until it began to grow dark and was time to go inside.

  “Would you like to join me for dinner?” Matswane asked as they gathered up their things.

  “It would be my pleasure,” said Phila.

  “I’ll meet you in the dining room. I need to take a shower first.”

  Phila kissed her on the cheek as they separated.

  In his room Phila felt the return of Weltschmerz. He also felt muddleheaded, with practical considerations concerning dinner. He had a cold shower. Putting on his last clean pair of jeans and the cotton shirt he had worn with the wedding suit, his mind hinted caution about the night but his lust pushed on. He liked the way his jeans hugged him and the confidence they inspired. They were Guess; he’d got them second-hand at an Oxfam shop. He splashed cologne on his face to hike his mood before going downstairs.

  A white guy, a rare species in the former homeland, with a goitre and kind manners, asked for Phila’s order when he entered the dining room. He ordered goulash for his main meal and chocolate cake on some exotic sweet sauce for dessert. He spotted Matswane sitting at the far end of the room in a bare-backed white dress. She looked like something out of an affecting dream. He didn’t realise he had taken as long as he had, and felt a little embarrassed that she’d got there before him.

  They exchanged information about the food they’d ordered, commenting on having had to place their orders at the door. “How strange is that?” Mat – because they were now that familiar with each other – said. She had ordered the lamb tagine and artichokes thing Phila had been too suspicious of to choose. In the end her choice, though sounding too exotic, was the better meal of the evening, so they shared it and left the goulash, which looked and tasted as if it had been made of kitchen leftovers.

  After dinner Mat invited Phila to her room for drinks.

  On top of the TV Phila saw there was a photo of her, in slim-cut jeans and a cropped jacket, revealing a toned midriff. A clean-shaven, crew-cut guy hugged her with too much confidence to be just a friend.

  “That’s my soon to be ex-fiancé,” Mat said unprompted when she noticed Phila’s eye lingering on the photo.

  “Sorry to hear. What happened?”

  Matswane poured two glasses of whiskey, Jack Daniel’s. Phila secretly wished, if they were going to drink that sort of thing, it could have been Jim Beam, which had a less nauseatingly perfumed taste, something he disliked about Tennessee whiskies.

  “Appletiser with it?” Mat asked, raising the glass.

  “No, thanks. Just ice is fine.” Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Phila gulped his first tot.

  “I usually have mine neat, and follow it with a glass of Appletiser,” Mat said, settling into a chair. Then, taking up the conversation she’d left off at dinner, she talked at length about her dissatisfaction with her job, her fiancé and her parents (who were always asking her for money). She seemed to be dissatisfied about a lot of things. Phila suspected the problem might be with her.

  “What can we do tonight? I was told there’s a festival in town?” Phila asked after a third glass, feeling more confident.

  “A fête champêtre. It’s like a boring show-off of agricultural produce. I already checked it out.”

  “I would like to check it out too.”

  “Festivals are so passé. Seen one, seen them all.”

  Silence fell between them. Phila liked overbearing women; they compensated for his indecision. He went out onto the balcony.

  “I’ve been thinking about your train thing,” Matswane called out from the bathroom. Phila could not hear her well because she had just flushed the toilet so he walked back to the room. “You are right. There’s always another train scheduled to leave next.”

  “The trick is in managing the time at the platform before the next train arrives – staving off the void,” Phila added, lowering his voice on the last part so Matswane wouldn’t hear.

  Night was falling fast outside. The stars hung low in the sky. Phila and Matswane talked nineteen to the dozen. After the sixth drink or something, Phila came back from the bathroom to be greeted by Matswane lying semi-naked in bed, her transparent nylon panties revealing a Hitler’s moustache on her Brazilian wax. She had a very, very attractive body. Still Phila was caught off guard, even though he had already suspected from their talk and oglings this was the direction things were headed.

  “I’m not, like, asking us to frog relate or something,” Matswane said when she noticed his hesitation.

  Frog relate? Phila was lost for a while before vaguely remembering something about frogs mating for life. He ran downstairs to get a packet of condoms from the vending machine he had seen in the foyer. When he came back, pronto, Mat said, “Let’s just go with the flow.” And she opened the sheets for Phila to get in. A moral fissure opened in his mind but he ignored it as he quickly took off his jeans and jumped into bed.

  “I’m just overwhelmed. I’ve had a salmon day so far, swimming upstream, and so was wondering if my nerves were playing tricks on me.” His voice had difficulty coming out because they were already kissing.

  They made love with surprising patience and synchronised movements, that seemed poised at the brink of ecstasy. They came at the same time in what Phila could describe as a mutinous arrest. After that they lay quietly next to each other for a while before Mat broke the silence.

  “You’re still present within me.”

  Phila took that to mean she was still orgiastic and made love to her again. What is under pressure in us, even concealed, is what comes out to explode in lovemaking, he thought.

  When he saw that Matswane was sleeping, it crossed his mind that she might be narcoleptic. Her sleeping face had the troubling serenity of a Bellini Madonna, with hints of the coming crucifixion. He listened to the sounds of silence. I’m lost, he thought, as he put his ringing cell phone on silent when he noticed who the c
aller was – Nandi.

  Later in his room he wrote an email, mostly gibberish poetic musings to suppress the guilt, to her:

  Hey there,

  Sorry I missed your call. I was sleeping. Now I can’t sleep. I am on the balcony of the hotel watching the wind shave tree scalps. The trees wave the direction of the wind. Somehow this irritates me.

  Remember the day at the beach in Port Alfred when your hair kept following the wind? The sea glimmered to the touch of the sun. The clouds whispered, “The wind is stealing the wetness away.” You said the gulls were shouting, I need you like rain, because you read it in a book of poetry by Philip Larkin. We argued about his racism. You instructed me to separate the art from the man. I was not convinced by your argument.

  You went to him, promising to come to me, but you never did. You said he awoke a longing in your body you could not explain. I was hurt. It made me resentful though I admired, envied, your happiness with him. I wanted to be the one creating that unexplainable longing in you, that happiness in your eyes.

  I recognised that coming storm, from the gathering clouds. I suspected there might be trouble soon, and so there was, and you went back to him for good, or so you said.

  I choose the vagabonding life because I know, no matter how I try, I can never fit into your decent life of theatres with the pleasantries of foaming lattés and the mocking condescension of sophisticated ignorance from your friends who mark me as the enemy before they even know me. I have a canker in my heart that gets restless around the ritualised anxieties of a bourgeois life.

  She’s almost everything I don’t like in a woman, yet I am drawn to her like a moth to candlelight. I can’t think of anything I want more at this stage, except being at the centre of her whirlwind.

  I am afraid I’ve misplaced our hopes by my misadventure.

  That’s my nothingness tumbling down into emptiness for you. Perhaps, in another life. No suitcase can hold a goodbye, your poet says …

  We Must Attempt the Task of Living