TUESDAY
The Raizier agent lets my hand go, shocked by its silkiness.
‘Susan Bellavista.’
Her cheeks are florid, her accent American. Her eyes are cornflower blue, pale petals crushed by hooves or running feet. The only signs of danger are her thick, languid fingers and her shoes, pressed together under the desk. They are polished and stiff, the grey of gunmetal. The leather climbs all the way up to the ankle bone.
‘Malachi Dakwaa. I have a job for you.’ The agent reaches for her tall, curved bag, red leather with a black handle. She splits it open like a carcass. Pulls out Africa, unfolds the map. Sixteen plastic squares knock staccato on the wood. She points at my country, coloured in pink.
‘Which province are you from?’
I touch the province next to mine.
‘Which village?’ she asks.
A door shuts in my throat.
‘Malachi, who did this to you?’
I see flying splinters, shattered school desks.
She tries a gentler way. ‘Malachi, let me just say, what they did to you and your people . . .’
I push back the people clamouring, steal air through their limbs.
‘You can correct it. Those monsters who kill with machine guns . . .’ She checks to see if she has hit broken skin. Her words drift out of focus, refuse to hold on to the tail of the one in front. The agent’s cinnamon breath disguises her predation.
‘What we do on our medical programme is get these murderers to save lives.’
I blink, try to make her out against the sky.
‘They can’t harm you.’ She watches me for signs of fear. ‘No danger.’ When she smiles, I see her eyeteeth are slightly grey. ‘Malachi. Today is the luckiest day of your whole life.’ Her fingers creep across the desk, her soft arms stick to the top. She wants to touch me.
‘Do you want a tongue?’
My head snaps back, startled.
She nods. ‘Raizier needs a new Maintenance Officer. As payment, they will graft a tongue for you.’ She sews hasty stitches before her lips. ‘I’m talking about the best surgeons alive.’ She doesn’t trust my English. ‘The best medicine.’
A force surges up my throat, completes my stump. A phantom tongue. She sees it boasting there like an erection. She sees the cataclysm in my eyes.
I did not know I wanted it.
My foolish eyes bathe themselves in salt. I cry before this large peach skirt and her two stiff shoes.
God has decided I have been punished enough.
‘Go home and think about it,’ says Susan Bellavista.
* * *
I am a hungry animal, leading with my head as I gallop to the sound of my bullish breath. I will have a living, breathing tongue that can curl and lash and spit. A tongue that can tap the palate behind my teeth, suck air off my molars, make my Kapwa clicks. I am a broad-faced bull with a wet chest. I am Taurus in the Times.
* * *
My boss gives me the Times every week.
‘Take it for your fires,’ Lizet says.
Each of us has a drum outside our room, but I don’t light fires, in case people come. I bring my lunch in the Times, vetkoek and jam, no evidence of it being read.
If people knew I could read, they would ask me about my father, my mother, my lover. They would say to me, ‘Malachi, write a reply.’
* * *
Lizet is hunched forward like a chicken now, her shoulders flared to flap over her desk. ‘Why-y-y?’
I turn up my hands, but there is nothing to read.
She throws her digital pen on the release form on her desk. It bounces and hits the blades of her solar fan. She doesn’t laugh. ‘No explanation.’
The stump of my tongue sinks into the floor of my mouth. I’m going to be reconstructed, I want to say. Remade.
Lizet waves a trembling hand with faint purple patches. ‘You’ll lose a month’s pay. Why don’t you wait?’
I let my head swing from side to side.
‘Malachi. You’re strange.’
A conviction, for slipping from her life like a loose page.
But she won’t feel any difference in the weight. She will train someone new in two afternoons, someone who can smile and sing, perhaps talk of their love life.
I want to pick Lizet up, feel her pointed purple knees poking my thighs. I want to squeeze her hard, implanted breasts against me and say, Lizet, I will come back one day. Then I will laugh and say, Sorry for leaving you so suddenly.
For seven years I have been her best quality controller, excellent with the automated plastic packing machine.
* * *
Only once did I have to electrocute myself for my boss. That day, she wore maroon high heels of soft leather with thin, crossed straps. It was not the shadow of her buttocks beneath her dress. I did not lust for the diamond that forms below a woman’s bum. The problem was, my boss had perfect ankles.
* * *
Lizet will miss talking without causing offence.
‘It’s because you don’t speak, Malachi. That’s why you have such good eyes.’
She will miss my patronising shrug. Whatever, Lizet.
She took my silence as affection, which is strange when you think that I never, not once, made a single sound. Not even when the locals slapped me at the Nelspruit taxi rank.
‘What’s this? Makwerekwere.’ An open-handed punch. ‘What country are you from? Darkie!’
I showed my empty eyes, my open palms. For this I got a dislocated jaw, like a badly hung door.
WEDNESDAY
Today the agent’s hair lifts up like a wig. She wears a loose woman’s suit of baby blue. I check her feet under the desk. Her shoes are navy blue. On each ankle is a dark mark from pressing them together. Her hair follicles are black from constant chopping.
‘You will be working offshore. On the sea?’
I nod.
‘On a rig. It’s like a boat, but it has . . . legs.’
I smile inwardly.
‘Malachi.’ A thread of cold threat coils in Susan Bellavista’s voice. ‘Confidentiality is the most important thing about this job. The consequences
