The Unusual Life Of Tristan Smith Part 35

When he walked beside her in the tunnel, illuminating the uneven floor with his moon-yellow flashlight, it was her choice to keep going, to lean forward and put her full 102 pounds into the chair, to force it over the jags of rock. The blisters would heal. The pain would go. She could control her bladder, could carry this p.i.s.s all the way to Saarlim City.

12.

When she had spun the pistol on her finger it had been her choice, but it had not felt like it. She had walked towards Aziz on that gluey grey-skied day because ... she was twenty-three years old ... she had that jelly feeling in her legs, the warm soft heat behind her eyes. It had been a little madness, a frisson. But far from evaporating, as you might expect, this feeling had been distilled, condensed, intensified by almost everything she saw thereafter even, for Chrissakes, the man's domestic life. The sight of a wife, children you would expect this to be a killer, but she carried her crush in deep disguise, right into his home. She slit her eyes, hollowed her cheeks, thrust her jaw, got a tingling at the nape of her neck watching how this cool, elegant man with the poker player's eyes was also the dab, the patron. She got numb and icy in her sinuses watching how he exercised his power, how he listened to his brothers with his dark eyes never leaving their faces, how he nodded, gestured, settled a dispute about propane gas by placing a hand against another man's cheek. Jacqui, who hated the ordinariness of the lower-middle cla.s.s of Efica, found herself sympathetically imagining life inside that little grocery store. She liked how they lashed the bedding on to the rafters just before dawn, the way they scrubbed the cracked green concrete floor until it smelt like a s.h.i.+p at sea; and although the men did have Glock automatics stuck in their belts, there was also a definite edge to the place she found almost religious hierarchical, ascetic, clean. She was not, herself, religious, but this slight foreign man with weird-looking sideburns was that rarity not mediocre.

When she rode with him in the truck, he talked to her man to man. It was almost unbearable, the intimacy. She twice had visions of resting her palm on his bristly olive-skinned neck. He told her frankly, in English, how they hi-jacked the big gasoline auto-lorries when they crossed the border out of Voorstand. He would die not knowing he had said these things to a woman. She did not want to tell him either. That was the paradox. It was her business to hold secrets, to retain them, to gain pleasure only from their tumescent pressure, never their release.

Aziz made Wally Paccione appear more and more a spiv. He was rude about the blown-out tyre, bad-tempered on the road, and now, as they pushed on through the stale air of the tunnel, the old Efican seemed to Jacqui to look like a Grand Duke by Bertolt Brecht. Sometimes, when his wheelbarrow hit a b.u.mp, you could hear him cuss. But he never did direct a human remark to the man who pushed him. Jacqui had watched. She had not yet seen so much as a smile or a nod pa.s.s between them.

In Chemin Rouge, Wally had been a reasonable employer, occasionally withholding, but mostly good-hearted. But neither he nor I this was her opinion made any concessions to the country we were pa.s.sing through. We had* not learned a word of Old Dutch and this, to a linguist, seemed both lazy and offensive. To her it seemed ill-mannered and provincial to continue to call a tyre a 'sock', a truck a 'Teuf-teuf'. In Zeelung our nurse began silently to judge us.

'Shut-the-f.u.c.k-up,' Wally had said, and Aziz, this so-called gangster, who could just as easily slit our throats, had sheltered us, fed us and abandoned his own truck just so he could fulfil his part of a bargain.

Jacqui could not bear that he be treated like this.

When he shone the torch for her, she thanked him in his own language: 'Dankie voor die flits.'

In the flickering yellow light she could see his mouth was compressed. His top lip was slightly swollen and this, with its intimations of both violence and grief, she found attractive.

'I am sorry,' she said to him. 'I know we have offended you.'

She had not really imagined he would hold her responsible for Wally's rudeness, so the darting hostility of his eyes, when he looked at her, shocked her.

'Het spijt ons als wij jou kwaai gemaakt,' she said, but he would not let himself be ma.s.saged by the language.

'There is no offence,' he said coldly.

'You must be concerned about your truck?' she said.

'Wat?'

'Ben jou worried oor jou auto-lorrie?'

'The auto-lorrie,' he said, s.h.i.+ning the flashlight on a jagged tooth of rock which they both had to duck beneath, 'is gone.'

'Hey,' Jacqui laughed, not knowing what to say, but meaning, please, mollo-mollo, I'm not your enemy.

'Wat?'

'Relax, the truck is fine.'

'You are a boy. What can you know?'

'I heard you ask the camarade with the gun,' Jacqui said. 'You asked him to care for the truck. He is your family?'

'You listened?'

'Aziz, you spoke in front of me. You know I speak your language.'

'You are very rude boy,' Aziz said.

Jacqui felt her eyes burning.

'He is thief,' Aziz said. 'He take too much money. This man will take my auto-lorrie The pumpkins, he sells them, then the auto-lorrie. Do you think I meet my family family by the road?' by the road?'

'I'm sorry but ...'

'Sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry,' Aziz mocked, making his voice so girlish that Jacqui, chilled with fright, felt she could not hold her bladder a second longer.

'Please shut up,' Wally Paccione said. 'Push the chair.'

'You shut up,' Aziz said.

'I was not talking to you, mug-wallop. I was talking to the nurse.'

Jacqui saw the size of the offence. She saw the explosion coming like a bulge in a cartoon snake.

'Mug-wallop?' Aziz said, his voice rising incredulously. 'Mug-wallop?'

'It's not this camarade's business to talk to you,' Wally said. 'His business is to push the chair. It is my business to talk to you.'

Aziz called to the farmer. 'Jy mag nou wegdonder,' he said. 'Jy can die wheelbarrow vat. Hy kan die rest lopen.'

The farmer immediately obeyed. He stopped pus.h.i.+ng. He stood immobile, his closely barbered head bent so as not to hit the ceiling.

Aziz was going to make the old spiv walk.

'Ik heb mijn geld nodig,' the farmer said, producing a blue cloth purse from his trouser pockets. 'Ik moes blijven tot ik mijn geld krijg,' the farmer said. He loosened the lips of the purse and waited.

'He needs to go,' Aziz said curtly. 'Now you pay him. Geduld,' he said to the farmer. 'Hierdie heer sal jou nou betalen.'

The farmer turned towards Wally, who began to struggle from the barrow which, being temporarily unsupported, tipped and sent him sprawling. He hit his head against the rock wall. When he stood up there was blood oozing down his temple and into his eye.

'I am an old man,' Wally said.

'My truck is gone,' Aziz said.

'Pet.i.t con.'

'Let me help you,' Jacques said to Wally. 'Let me interpret ...'

'Your truck is still there, you ballot,' Wally told the glowering guide. Tell this man we will pay him when he pushes me to the end of the tunnel.'

'I have been very stupid,' Aziz said. 'I have been too stupid for anything.'

'Your truck is fine,' Wally said.

'The truck ... is ... fine,' Tristan said.

'This isn't necessary,' Jacqui said, but Aziz was already holding the slender flashlight with his teeth. Jacqui watched with a chilled sort of pleasure as he aimed the beam of the light at his revolver and fed small blunt-nosed cartridges into it. He took his time, as if he did not expect anyone to interfere with him. Indeed, no one did.

When he had loaded eight sh.e.l.ls, he removed the flashlight from his mouth and, having held it fastidiously between thumb and forefinger, dropped it into his s.h.i.+rt pocket.

'Kom, staan agter mij,' he told the farmer.

Jacqui translated: 'Come and stand behind me.' No one seemed to hear her. The farmer sc.r.a.ped along the tunnel wall behind Aziz so that he was, of all the party, the one nearest to the exit.

'You pay me,' Aziz said to Wally. 'You pay for my truck. Or I take the money for myself.'

'Take it then,' Wally said. He pulled a crumpled handful of Zeelung currency out of his trousers and held it up towards Aziz. 'There is no more money.'

It was obvious to Jacqui: you did not deal with a man like Aziz in this way.

Wally let go of the money so it fell in a damp wad to the floor of the tunnel.

It lay there, beneath Aziz's consideration.

'You,' he said to Jacqui. 'Go back with them.'

She hesitated. He kneed her in the backside, pus.h.i.+ng her into the wheelchair. 'You are a girl,' he said. 'Go back with them.'

Jacqui edged around Tristan's chair.

'Now you turn him around,'

It was hard to swing the chair around. Jacqui did it.

To the farmer, Aziz said, 'Geef mij jou mes.'

'He's telling him to get a knife,' Jacqui said.

The farmer lifted his wide trousers, revealing a bright red cloth tied around his calf.

'He's asking for a knife!'

From the red cloth, the farmer pulled out a long knife and gave it, handle first, to Aziz who, having moved his revolver into his left hand, accepted it with his right.

'Schijn het licht aan die Veranderling.'

The farmer took the flashlight from Wally and shone it on me, Tristan Smith.

Aziz then knelt carefully in front of me. He put the tip of the knife inside the cuffed leg of the trousers which Jacqui had had made for me on the Boulevard des Indiennes. Then, with the confidence of a tailor, Aziz brought the knife upwards and parted the leg all the way to the hip in one clean straight rip.

What was revealed, of course, was the bandage. Inside the bandage you could see the fat wads of currency, sixteen different bundles each wrapped in oilskin.

Aziz cut the second leg.

'OK,' he said to me, 'perhaps you do not want your s.h.i.+rt cut.'

I undid my own b.u.t.tons.

'We give you half,' Wally said. 'OK, fair is fair.'

But Aziz was already discovering the extent of the fortune hidden inside the bandages.

'You lied to me,' he said. 'You said you were poor. I was sorry for you. I tried to help you.'

I pulled the bandage from around my chest. When Jacqui tried to a.s.sist me, I shoved her hand away and pulled the bandage roughly away from my raw red skin. I gave the p.r.i.c.k our a.s.sets, dry-eyed, giving him my mutant's smile.

When I spoke, I spoke slowly, carefully.

'I'm ... coming ... back ... to ... kill you,' I said to this man whom I would never see again. He had all my attention. All my animus. I did not notice Jacqui retreat into the darkness of the tunnel. We were like dogs fighting she could have revealed her secret in front of us and we would not have seen her. She went two yards, three, ten. She lifted her jacket. She pulled her trousers to her knees. She rested her back against the rock wall, and balanced herself on her toes. As the steaming urine pooled amongst the cold blue gravel, we men continued making threats to each other. She could smell the testosterone, as strong as bacon cooking.

13.

The tunnel had become a kind of open pa.s.sageway or race, and from here I could see a flag, an exceptionally large Voorstand flag, hanging limply in the night sky above our heads. We were at our destination, but I was so angry I could not speak. We were in Voorstand, stone broke, unprotected.

'Relax,' Wally said. 'Look the Voorstand flag. '

I heard a car door slam. My skin began to b.u.mp and s.h.i.+ver.

Then: a shout.

Then: bright white quartz lights. We were spotlit. I was blinded. My heart was beating hard enough to break. I was dizzy, blind, a rabbit in a hunter's spotlight. I was the Mutant entering Voorstand.

14.

That night, the night we entered Voorstand, Leona had waited with the other facilitators. It was like any night at Pla.s.se's Crossing they had formed a semi-circle of trucks, cars, all-wheel drives around the exit from the tunnel. That was what normal life had become for her. You camped there with the other facilitators, waiting for the Fresh Meat Fresh Meat to come out of the tunnel. That was what they called the travellers who came illegally into Voorstand. Good people used this disgusting term artists, performers, brave people she admired, folk who could hang from their toes one hundred feet above a bed of nails. Leona used it too, in the end. Nine times out of ten the poor fresh meat was panicked half to death. It came out into the light, blinking, hardly able to see, and all around it were facilitators, tugging at its sleeves, grabbing at its shoulders, signing up the business with give-away motel pens. to come out of the tunnel. That was what they called the travellers who came illegally into Voorstand. Good people used this disgusting term artists, performers, brave people she admired, folk who could hang from their toes one hundred feet above a bed of nails. Leona used it too, in the end. Nine times out of ten the poor fresh meat was panicked half to death. It came out into the light, blinking, hardly able to see, and all around it were facilitators, tugging at its sleeves, grabbing at its shoulders, signing up the business with give-away motel pens.

In her native Morea, Leona had been a jahli, that is, someone who sings songs and complicated stories, the performance of which not only requires considerable musical ability, but also a memory capable of retaining as many as one hundred different family names.