The Impostor (22 page)
Authors: Damon Galgut
‘Yes. It’s all gone now. None of it looks the same. The lodge, the
kloof
–oh, you wouldn’t recognize any of it. Crawling with people. All built up. Gone,’ he repeated, and made an abrupt gesture with his hand, as if he was pushing something away.
‘You still go up there sometimes?’
‘No, I cut my ties. Took the money and ran. I told you, when the deal was done, I would get out.’
After a pause, Adam asked, ‘And how is Baby?’
‘Oh, I think she’s well. But I wouldn’t know for sure. You heard she left me, of course…?’
‘No.’
‘Yes. She’s living with
him
now. Our divorce went through a couple of months ago. I think they’re planning to get married next year. But that’s all right. No hard feelings. She’s happy, I suppose, which is the main thing.’ He glared into the distance for a while. ‘I suffered over it,’ he said at last. ‘I loved her very badly, as you know. But I’m over it now.’
‘That’s good. I’m glad.’
‘I called Adele the other day. My first wife, you know. I miss her and my little girl a lot. I thought there might be a chance, that we could…But she said no. Well, that’s how it is. You can’t go back to the past.’ He reflected on this musingly for a moment, then said, ‘Yes, I killed my chances there.’ His voice changed abruptly, becoming hard and small: ‘She destroyed my life, my whole life, just to get ahead. She won’t stay with him either, you watch. Everybody’s just a step on the ladder to her. I hate her guts.’
It took Adam a moment to realize that he was talking about Baby. No hard feelings, but he hated her guts: the old ambivalence was still at work in Canning, speaking its double truths.
‘Yes, it was hard,’ Canning said. ‘But that’s all past now. And I did all right out of it!’
As he usually did when he talked about money, he shook his pockets, giving off a merry, jingling noise. Money had always been a substitute for Canning, filling in the spaces left by love or friendship. And it seemed genuinely to console him, even now. But there was also a tiny strain of doubt, indistinguishable from the greyness in his face. As if to cover it up, he repeated loudly, ‘Yes, I did all right out of it!’
‘That’s nice,’ Adam said hollowly.
‘I got myself a couple of vintage cars. A 1929 Packard and a 1930 Cadillac LaSalle Convertible. You must come and have a spin sometime. I also bought a wonderful house, national monument, Herbert Baker. I don’t need to work again. But I might take up something, just to keep occupied. It’s lonely sometimes, having nothing to do. You know what I mean?’
Adam didn’t answer and a silence came again: the silence that had brooded under their every conversation, waiting to consume them, from the first day they’d met outside the coop. They became uncomfortable and started going through all the cues of departure. Canning stretched and changed position. Adam looked at his watch.
‘Good to see you, Adam. We’ll get together sometime.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Canning stood up; in a minute he would be gone. Unexpectedly, startling himself, Adam said, ‘There’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t remember you from school. Not at all. I have no idea who you are.’
Canning sat down again. He looked astonished. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said at last. ‘Are you making a joke?’
Adam shrugged. He didn’t know where this was coming from. The moment for such a talk was long past; there was no point any more. But the words had risen from some recess in him, charged with peculiar urgency.
‘But we talked about it. You said…’
‘Yes. But I was lying.’
Canning looked stricken. ‘But you
must
remember,’ he said plaintively. ‘You were my hero.’
‘So you keep saying.’
‘Our talk in the cloakroom…You do remember that.’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
They stared at each other. Canning’s face was working, but it took a long time for his voice to emerge. ‘It was the end of term,’ he said, very softly. ‘I was supposed to be going home for the holidays the next morning. I’d just spoken to my father on the phone and he’d said something to me. The usual thing, about how I was useless, I would never amount to anything–how he’d prefer it if I didn’t ever come home.
‘I’d heard it a thousand times before, but that night was different. For some reason I just cracked. It was all too much and I couldn’t go on. So I got a piece of rope and went creeping into the cloakroom. I was going to string myself up in a corner, where they wouldn’t find me till morning.
‘But it didn’t happen like that. Because fate had sent you there to meet me. You were already there, in one of the cubicles, crying.’
‘
Me
?’ Adam said. He had been listening with incredulous fascination, waiting for something to be stirred–but it was like hearing about a stranger.
‘Yes, you. They’d been teasing you, the other boys, about how you used to wet the bed–’
‘Yes, all right,’ Adam said quickly; he didn’t want to dwell on that.
‘And we ended up talking. You didn’t see the piece of rope, I hid that away, but we were both outsiders that night. You were very kind. You were gentle to me. Nobody had ever talked to me like that before–as if I was an important person, as if I mattered.’
‘Me?’ Adam said again. ‘Canning, are you sure you don’t have me confused with somebody else?’
‘No. Of course not. It was you.’ Canning was both calm and adamant. ‘It was one of the most important moments of my life. The advice you gave me–I’ve held onto it ever since. How could I forget who spoke to me? Everything changed because of you. It was the first time I didn’t feel alone, the first time somebody was
with
me. I stayed alive that night because of you, and I’ve never forgotten. We didn’t talk much after that, we were shy of each other, but I could see that it mattered to you. And after we’d left school, I always knew we’d meet again one day.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘But it happened.’
‘Maybe. But, Canning, you have to understand…for me, it must’ve been a passing incident. Whatever advice I gave you…it must’ve been because I was upset. I’ve never thought about it again.’
‘I’ve thought about it every day since then.’
‘I’m sorry, Canning.’
The gulf between them had become complete. There was no bridge, no connection any more.
After a long silence, Canning went on tonelessly. ‘You told me to wait,’ he said. ‘You told me we’d both have our pay-back one day. If we were patient, if we stored it all up, all our crying and anger, the right moment would come to take revenge. And now I have.’
Finally Adam understood. The destruction of Gondwana, the transformation of the pristine wilderness into a golf course: all of this was because of him. Because of some thoughtless adolescent advice a quarter of a century ago. The knowledge repelled him; he moved away from Canning on the bench.
‘I don’t remember,’ he said again–but for the first time it wasn’t true. When Canning had spoken now about revenge, something had stirred at last in Adam. It wasn’t a memory; not quite. But it was like the edge of a memory: a shimmer, a tincture, a taste, in which that cloakroom from long ago was present.
It had happened; he was there. That much he knew. But the words, the gestures, the specifics of the encounter–all that had disappeared. The only thing left was that residual tingle, like a movement glimpsed in deep, dark water, a trace of something whole and complete. He had become another person entirely. And maybe–the thought occurred to Adam, at this inappropriate moment–it was what his whole life would come down to in the end: everything that felt burningly present and important would just be a tremor one day, like something that had happened to somebody else.
He pushed the thought, and the moment, away; he stood. Although he didn’t have to go back to work, he was behaving as though he was late.
‘We’ll talk about it another time,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got to go.’
‘Yes, yes, of course, I understand.’ Canning had also jumped up. ‘Thank you for going over this old stuff with me…’
‘Yes.’ He took a step back. ‘Goodbye, Canning. Take care of yourself.’
‘Goodbye, Adam. Nice to see you.’
They nodded at each other, and then they were hurrying in different directions, under the overhanging trees.
A little way further on, Adam stopped again. It felt as if he’d left something behind, something vitally important that he would need in just a moment. But when he patted his pockets, it was all there: his phone, his keys, his wallet, his diary. He stood for a moment longer, thinking of nothing, till he came back to where he was. Then he started to rush on, through the shadow cast by a statue, rusting and discoloured and streaked with bird-shit, of some forgotten hero.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Big thanks to Riyaz Mir, whose cooking and companionship have kept me going, and to my friend Sheila Coggon, for lending me her Goan hideaway for at least one draft’s worth. Likewise to the Civitella Ranieri Centre in Umbria, where these pages were completed. On the editorial front, I am indebted to the formidable talents of Alison Lowry, Toby Mundy and Ellen Seligman, as well as Tony Peake and Nigel Maister, whose critical observations have sharpened this book. I’m also grateful to Helen Bradford and Lance van Sittert for some useful conversations.
ALSO BY DAMON GALGUT
A Sinless Season
The Quarry
Small Circle of Beings
The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs
The Good Doctor
Copyright © 2008 by Damon Galgut
First published by Penguin Books (South Africa) in 2008.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher–or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency–is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Galgut, Damon, 1963–
The impostor / Damon Galgut.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-253-2
I. Title.
PR
9369.3.
G
34
I
46 2008 823
C
2008-900889-8
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
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