Zoo City (20 page)

   "Let's see," the sangoma's shiny forehead accordions in furrows of concentration as, following whatever directions he's getting via his phone, he picks out the songbook and my notebook. "Good," he says. He shakes out the clippings and chucks the notebook aside. He shoves the phone in his pocket and then, holding the clippings and the songbook in one hand, he pulls out a zippo lighter and flicks it open.

   "What are you doing?" I grab for the songbook, but he yanks it away, holding it above his head as the corner of the pages starts to brown and curl in the licking flames.

   "Helping you." The fire in his right hand has reached its height, flaring hot and bright and yellow, shedding burned pieces, like snowflakes, crisp around the edges. "You young people. No respect for your culture." A fragment drifts down: "Let's party, let's get together, siyagruva, baby, let's be free", a scorched society-page pic of Song and S'bu at the SAMA awards, posing in his'n'hers versions of a pinstriped suit with '80s-style braces and matching trilbies.

   Dumisani yelps and flicks his fingers where the flame has caught them. The scraps of paper fall to the reed mat among the strewn rubble and the contents of my bag, still burning. He whacks out the flames, then scrapes together the scraps and pieces, cupped in his hands.

   His initiate enters, carrying a wooden pestle and mortar, already full of ground and reeking herbs, a tin cup, a syringe sealed in plastic and a two-litre plastic Coke bottle full of a viscous yellow liquid. She bows and retreats, and the sangoma funnels the burnt scraps through the V of his hands into the bowl of the mortar. He makes a big show of grinding them up. Then he passes me the syringe in its plastic pack.

   "I will need some blood, please. Don't worry, it's perfectly sterile. Just a drop will do." But as I unwrap it and move to prick my finger, he motions for me to stop. "Not you. The animal."

   Sloth retreats behind my back with a whimper.

   "I can do it if you're scared," he offers, with a hint of impatience.

   "No, it's all right. Come on, buddy, just a little prick."

   Sloth extends his arm and turns his head away as I punch the needle into the thick skin of his forearm. It takes a second and then a bright bead of red wells up through his fur. The sangoma passes me a dried leaf, and I swipe up the blood and pass it back to him to be ground up in the mortar. Finally, he adds a thick glop of the milky yellow liquid, which is pus, mucus or unpasteurised sour milk – I can't decide which is the worst possibility. I suppose it depends on the source. He pours it out into the tin mug.

   "Muti?"

   "Not for treatment. It's part of your diagnosis. Drink it."

   I've drunk my share of dubious concoctions in my time, but I'm thinking more along the lines of nasty shooters. And there was the time I took a swig from a bottle of methylated spirits stolen from the art supplies storeroom when I was fifteen, but we won't get into that or the vomiting that followed. "If you think I'm drinking that, you're insane."

   "You need to stop fighting," he says, and bashes the tin cup against my mouth so hard I cut my lip against my teeth. As I gasp in shock, some of the foulness washes down my throat. It is warm and slimy and bitter and sweet, like crushed maggots that have been feeding on rotten sewer rat. Like shit and death and decay. Sloth slides from my back, suddenly limp as a sack of drowned kittens. I drop forward onto all fours, heaving and gagging, but coughing up only long strings of spit. And then the convulsions start.

I am three years old, sitting in the park eating those small pink flowers that grow in the clover. They are unbearably sour and I shudder every time I mash one up between my teeth. And pluck another one to do it again. Thando falls off the slide. I am only peripherally aware of this, I am so intent on chewing up the sour little flowers. He runs up to show me his skinned knee with pride. Blood runs down his leg, sticky like honey.

There is a man with plastic gloves and a facemask picking out globs of brain and pieces of Thando's skull from the daisy bush.

The absence of my parents at the trial. When I try to call them from the prison payphone, the electronic blips monitoring how many seconds I have left before my money runs out also count down the silence stretching between us.

Pacing outside the ambulance entrance to Charlotte Maxeke's ER, smoking ferociously, practically chewing up the cigarettes. So absorbed in the loop of please-don't-be-dead-please-don't-be-dead and still high, I don't notice the shadows starting to drop from trees and axles and other dark places and coagulating. Slime mould does the same thing in the right conditions: it masses together to form one giant community with a single-minded intent. Only slime mould isn't accompanied by a howling sucking smacking sound like the sky tearing at an airplane. Slime mould doesn't come for you, to drag you down into the dark.

I am laughing and swearing as Thando – always the fucking white knight – drags me down the stairs of Belham Luxury Apartments, which were never luxury and barely apartments. Some of the other junkies watch blearily from their doorways, but can't be arsed to intervene. The others can't be arsed to even look. Like my parents can't be arsed to get involved, not after all my prior offences.

"Leave me the fuck alone!" I laugh and then scream and rail and kick and flail as my brother shoves me into the shiny new VW Polo that came with his shiny new promotion. "Why can't you just leave me–"

Songweza painting her nails purple in her anonymous bedroom. When she is finished, she spreads her legs and paints narrow stripes, like cuts, down the inside of her thigh.

The World Trade Center. Only the planes wheeling round the twin towers have dark feathers streaked with white, and long sharp beaks.

Afterwards, the daisy bush retains the impression of the impact of Thando's body. I am expecting a cartoon, a perfect Wile E. Coyote silhouette with arms thrown up in surprise. But it is just a crushed bush. Broken branches. Bruised and torn leaves. Stains on white petals as if from a rusty rain.

Where are your parents? the lady in the supermarket says, leaning on her knees to talk to me. She has kind eyes but her name-badge reads Murderer! Murderer! Murderer! When my parents walk outside the ER entrance to find me, to tell me, gripping each other like gravity has fallen away and they are trying to find a new way to navigate the world, they see I already know. I am sitting on the pavement in the red and blue strobe of an ambulance light, shaking and making hiccupping gagging sounds of terror. Sloth is clutching my chest, his arms around my shoulders like a Judas hug. The Undertow deferred only for the moment. But not before I feel the dry heat of its breath.

The Tsotsis performing on stage in their Mzekezeke ski-masks. They pull off the masks. They are all Songweza. Then they pull off their faces.

An email. Year, make and model number. Licence and registration. Time and address. I don't feel guilty. Insurance will pay out for the car. I'll be settled with my dealer. Hijackings happen every day. I don't count on the white knight.

I am splashing through puddles in our garden, wearing my redand-black spotty ladybug galoshes with smiley insect faces on the toes. There are pink flamingoes in the puddles, like a documentary I once saw on the Etosha Pans. Or was it Okavango? I dash forward in delight, windmilling my arms and shouting to get them to take fright / flight. Only the next puddle is not a puddle, and it swallows me whole. As I sink, I look up to the surface and I realise they were not flamingoes at all. And something is pulling me down.

BIBLIOZOOLOGIKA: AN ENTYMOLOGY OF ANIMALLED TERMS

M

Mashavi – a Southern african word (spec. Shona) used to describe both the preternatural talents conferred by an aposymbiot and the aposymbiot animal itself.

The term first appeared in print in 1979 as "mashave" in an unrelated text (Myths and Legends of Southern Africa by Penny Miller, published by TV Bulpin, Cape Town) that nevertheless reflects today's common usage and meaning in contemporary Southern Africa.

   "The mashave are spirits of foreigners, or of wanderers who died far away from their families and clans and did not receive a proper burial. Owing to this, they were never "called home", but continued to roam restlessly through the bush. Homeless spirits like these are feared because they are always on the watch for a living host in whom to reside; as the spirit of a wanderer cannot go back to the land of his ancestors, it seeks the body of one who is willing to harbour him.

   "If the human is unwilling, an illness overtakes him or her which cannot be cured by European medicine, but must be treated by a diviner. If possession of a mashave is diagnosed, the patient must decide whether to accept or reject it. If he does not accept the mashave, the diviner will transfer it into the body of an animal (preferably a chicken or a black goat) by laying his hands on it. He then drives the animal into the wilderness in exactly the same way as the Israelite priests of old drove the 'scapegoat' into the desert after making it the repository of the sins of their people.

   "Anyone unwise enough to take possession of these accursed animals will himself become host to the mashave spirit.

   "If a person accepts his mashave, the sickness leaves him immediately. A special ceremony is held during which he is initiated into a cult made up of groups whose members all possess similar mashaves. Some practise midwifery, others are skilled in divining or herbal lore. Some mashave-possessed individuals are even believed to confer skills in such improbable things as football, horse-racing or attaining good examination marks!"

I open my eyes. I am sitting on the narrow bench in the waiting room. Sloth is curled in my lap. I am clenching an unlabelled cough-syrup bottle in my hand. The initiate is standing beside me, holding my bag.

   "What's this?" I say, examining the glass jam-jar in my hand. The viscous liquid slopping inside is a noxious sulphur colour.

   "Muti. For cleansing yourself of the bad energies."

   "Like whatever you just poisoned me with?"

   "It will help with the headache. Animal magic is very powerful. You may have some after-effects. Use it as required."

   "Thanks," I say, with every inch of sarcasm I can muster. I drop the jar in my bag with every intention of pouring it down the drain when I get home.

   Thunder rumbles above, rattling the windowpane, the tin roof. The daylight has darkened. I stagger out the door, cradling Sloth against my chest. Everything feels flattened out. Or maybe it's just that I'm still feeling the effects of whatever the sangoma poisoned me with. Sloth groans and stirs, and I take off my headwrap and fashion it into a kind of sling to carry him.

   There is a glitter of glass on the pavement beside my car. The side window is smashed. I realise that my cellphone was not among the objects I turfed out of my bag onto the reed mat, that I must have left it on the passenger seat after hanging up on Gio.

   I have a headache that could rip off the worst hangover's head and piss down its neck. The cicadas are clicking. The traffic hums and buzzes. Fat drops of rain spatter like grease. I lurch over to the man cutting rubber, who is starting to pack up. Even the tourists are retreating from the storm, leaving the parking lot deserted. "Excuse me. Did you see who broke my window?"

   He looks away.

   "You were right here. You must have seen it."

   He flicks an offcut of rubber at my feet. It's as eloquent a gesture of contempt as spitting. "Fuck off, apo."

   I look around for my yellow-eyed car guard. There is no sign of him. The rain is getting harder. But there is a bright sweet smell in the air that leads me to the tarpaulin strung up under the tree. I duck my head under the tarp, but even as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I realise that the shelter extends much deeper, that whoever lives here has burrowed under the rubble to extend their den. I crouch down and shuffle forward into the haze of smoke, heavier than mandrax or tik, and with a sour note, or perhaps that's just the body odour. There's another smell in here too, one that's all too familiar – drains. I can make out three figures sitting on their haunches, passing a pipe between them.

   "Hey fokkof! Wat doen jy?" a girl screeches, clutching the pipe to her jealously as I shuffle towards them. She is not so old, late teens, maybe early twenties, but the lifestyle has eaten into her appearance, and her face is pocked with scars and bruises. There is a sullen knot at her jaw and her hair is clumpy, with inflamed bald patches as if someone has been ripping it out by the handfuls.

   "I just want my phone."

   "Jussis. I told you, mos, I told you," says Yellow Eyes, looking wild and scared. An older boy moves forward, all aggro. If Yellow Eyes is a junkie rat, this guy is a seriously nasty piece of work. Behind him, someone else stirs in the darkness, making a rattling sound. I have badly misjudged this.

   "There's no phone, lady. Now fokkof," Yellow Eyes says.

   "Even just my sim card. It's worth money to me."

   "How much?" the girl says.

   "Thula, Busi!" hisses the older boy, and Busi cringes as if he's already hit her.

   "R200 for the sim card," I offer. "R300 if it comes with the phone."

   "R400."

   "Fine." I open my wallet, careful not to let them see how much more money I have in there, peel out four R100 notes and hold them up in front of them.

   "What's to stop us just taking it, hey?" Busi says with a leer, creeping forward again.

   "Me." My incarceration in Sun City taught me other things apart from how to wait. Like how to stare someone down. My eyes have adjusted to the dim light and at the back I can make out a drop into a cave of sorts. The kids have excavated a storm drain, or maybe it was already damaged when they parked their tarp over it. They probably sleep down there, all tangled up together like a rat's nest. There is someone down there, shuffling backwards and forwards. The movement makes a dry skittery sound.

   "You some kind of ninja?" Nasty Piece of Work says, smirking at the others.