The organ is awarded on a leasehold basis. If the signee speaks of what he/she has witnessed, Raizier has the right to retrieve the organ without legal recourse.
‘What this means, Malachi, is that if you ever talk about what you have seen, we will claim back your payment.’ She waits. ‘Do you understand me?’
I swallow some stinging spit.
‘This is top-secret science,’ Susan growls. She whips a digital pen from somewhere. ‘Can you write your name?’
I hesitate.
‘Just a mark?’
I grip the pen like it’s a captured snake. I force its tip down near her fingernail, fight the reptile into a grim, deep M.
Susan lets go of her breath. There is a bitter triumph in the way she says, ‘Good.’
* * *
I stop at the factory shop, buy a new radio for the deep sea. It will be my secret hardware. If they search me, they will see a radio for entertainment, not a strike that rips me inside out, a Molotov cocktail for my genitals.
* * *
I usually roll my clothes up tight like intestines but today I lay them flat in my suitcase, each pair of trousers, each shirt unfurled. I run my extra belt along the edge. My duvet, I roll up and tie tight. I bought it from Kashmir’s with my first New Nation salary. It has feathers inside, the dead chickens’ gift to me, perhaps for letting them spread their limbs on a polystyrene tray; not live crushed towards their own fat hearts, their cage cranking smaller every six hours. This is how fast they grow, their own fat cells shoving into each other, bruising their inflating heart that can do no other than punch back, pump.
I throw in the cheap yellow Nokia Lizet gave me for after-hours callouts. I dare not take any books. In a sudden spasm of longing, I tuck an ancient roller-gel pen into the suitcase lid, and a thin white pad made from real paper. I’ll die without words, surely.
For fifteen years I have lied about my literacy, when the truth is I read any words that dare to float close. I read the plastic magazines dumped in the shallow bush – Shutter Speed Photography, Cat Lover’s Journal, S.A. Motorboat. I read advertising flyers that truly fly in the wind. I read warning signs on everything, disclaimers. Ask me the ingredients on the Colgate shampoo bottle. In the bus I read long-distance over shoulders, so people think my fixed stare is vacant, perhaps autistic.
Every three months I take my suitcase on wheels to the Hospice shop in Nelspruit. I pack in thirty-six books from the waste crates in the corner, three books to read per week. I rattle the case over my threshold, shut the door with a double bang. In my locked room, my boxer shorts on to cover my shame, I read with my electric wires standing by.
Where will I hide those bodies now?
* * *
I have no choice but to light my first fire. A man is snoring two doors down. There is a whispering beyond, the whimper of a child. Someone else is smuggling what they love. No visitors are allowed overnight. Here at New Nation, the men sometimes sleep in the bush on cardboard sheets in order to cradle their children or make love to their wives. Tonight, the child in number eleven has two scared parents and two milky breasts. I know this from the uncertainty of his cry. His parents are risking their monthly income to touch the baby’s face in the candlelight, play at being family in the hours between midnight and three a.m. when the chickens first feed.
I quietly pile some clods of chicken droppings into my fireplace. The chicken-shit flames crash silently towards the stars, envious of their silver. I drop the books in threes. They shrink and leave a fragile shell of black. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Margaret Atwood, E.M. Forster. Louise Erdrich, Charles Dickens, Kweku Adobol. Even A Short History of Everything. I let it burn alone. Whoof. It conspires towards silence, as if the pattern of civilisation and the jealous, obsessive energy of science were all only worth an exhalation. I am not joking. It was a definite sigh. The child cries in number eleven as if the flames are flicking his tiny feet. It is a swollen breast that muffles the child’s shout. I hear it in the fullness of the silence. Some things I know because I am not living. I am listening.
It is three a.m. A late, late cremation.
THURSDAY
I wheel my case into and out of the ulcers on the road. When I look back there are men’s eyes shining from every dark doorway. I breathe in, swing my case onto my head; keep a rough grip so I don’t look too womanly. It throws a shadow over my eyes, brings a Bhajoan sun to my thighs – a sun which was, a moment ago, South African. I forget my audience, drop my hands from my suitcase. I wipe the strange tears from my eyes.
What are these? Why now?
* * *
The agent is waiting against a bullet-shaped BMW that looks like a huge, shining suppository. Susan’s buttocks have warmed against the metal and spread.
‘Ahhh!’ her hips thrust off the car.
Relief ignites her eyes, illuminates the fluff on her orange trouser suit. Her suitcase is safely stored on the back seat, Scottish tartan. Next to it is a copper urn with a red ribbon tied around it. Susan clips open the boot. I don’t dust off my suitcase before I lift it: I have so much to apologise for, it’s better not to start. I’d have to apologise for the sweat I’m about to bring into her high-speed electric vehicle. And the fact that I won’t make a single sound for seven hours.
Susan shuts the boot. ‘Righty oh!’
I jerk my mouth into an
