‘And now?’ Tamba says.
I pull on imaginary udders. It must be from a cow, though, Tamba. Corn milk only causes further deficiencies. I pinch the teats between thumb and finger, use long strokes. I think those milking machines use grease.
‘Milk?’ Tamba guesses.
I nod, skim the air in an arc above Madame Sophie’s fingertips.
‘Ah, calcium.’ Tamba is becoming world-class at word association.
I nod at him, bend my tired back over Madame Sophie’s fingers.
‘Have you heard of euthanasia?’ she asks me. ‘Do you know that word?’
No, Madame Sophie, I was only the son of an English teacher who believed that words were life-giving entities.
I loosen her fingers. She hooks them through the mesh.
I straighten up, stare at their half-moons. Are there white spots?
‘It was euthanasia,’ she says. ‘Not murder.’
You are too white, Madame Sophie. Overexposed. I drop her towel in the detergent. What of the dark half of the photo negative?
* * *
Josiah has had thirty-nine clippings to prepare for my visit. I lock the glove to his cage, but he waves his black talons towards the tiny camera facing it.
‘What will happen if Tamba sees these?’
His nails are more than an inch long and knotted like the wood of an ugly tree. I stare up at the surveillance box, but Tamba is still head banging up there, listening to God-knows-what on his speakers. Josiah sighs.
‘Useless, that one.’
Josiah’s toenails have also gone into their first twist. The trick is to get the clippers beneath the devilish bend.
‘A sad story, Malachi. Your cousin was the only one who died with dignity.’
I freeze. Kontar’s body on the school-room floor, his shirt hanging in torn strips as if to keep the flies away.
I crunch my blade through Josiah’s coiling toenail. It cracks length-wise, rips through the cuticle. Yes.
A sheer accident but painful, surely. Josiah’s toe is bleeding. He touches it with interest. I fill my lungs with rumbling breath.
‘Are you growling, Malachi?’
I let the roar out of my sternum, ‘Haaaghhh!’ I don’t care who hears it.
‘What did you do, Malachi?’ The dirty flecks in his eyes pull like radioactive magnets. ‘What did you do to make them cut off your tongue?’
I crash into his cage. Josiah laughs as if he has ripped out my raw heart. I shove away, rock towards Vicki.
She stares into my open mouth as I gasp for oxygen. ‘Malachi?’
I steady myself on her cage, get my bearings.
Upstairs, Tamba chomps down on the split end of a dreadlock.
Floor. Wall. Red hand over red hand I make it to the end of the aisle.
‘Your bucket, Malachi,’ Vicki hisses.
I force my attention to the floor. One shoe before the other shoe, I retrace my steps. I don’t look, but I sense Josiah’s pockmarked eyes drawing every last iron filing of courage from me. His laugh is rich with amusement and something more deadly. A terrible satisfaction.
Josiah has given his guilt to me.
It is several kilometres to the door. My legs seem to have lengthened, like the man on stilts outside Eddie’s Gas in Nelspruit. The only thing that saves me is the sight of my brown shoes as I follow my stilted course along the floor.
‘Josiah, you’re such a cunt,’ Vicki says behind me.
Josiah’s laugh for the first time sounds human. He is finally free. He gave it all to me.
I slam the door shut. I meant for it to be more of a composed click. Another loud thud as I throw my back against it. I crash my bucket to the floor, drop my head between my knees.
What did you do, Malachi?
Is Josiah forever part of me? I watch a string of saliva hanging from my mouth. It is clean, at least. Silver.
What did you do?
‘Aaaagh!’ I shout to drown out Josiah’s chant.
Tamba comes clanging down the spiral stairs. ‘Malachi?’ He trips the last part, nearly falls onto me. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Aaagh,’ I moan.
‘Are you sick?’ His warm hand touches my back, so gentle I want to rise into it and let Tamba hold me.
Help me.
I want to press my face into his chest, hear his heart beat too fast from his coffee bomb.
I climb slowly to my feet. I lay my back against the door, a metal slab in a parlour for the dead. The floor and the wall have swapped places, that’s all.
Tamba steps back. ‘What do you need, Malachi?’
Does he expect me to mime some kind of vitamin?
I press my palms against the door behind me. Door. Floor. I push off with my hands, walk along the floor. One brown shoe. Two.
‘Okay, just trying to help. I mean, it could have been a heart attack or something.’ Tamba touches his heart, the precise place I want to lay my head. ‘Jesus.’
He follows me in silence down the corridor.
Walk faster, Malachi. Don’t be insipid.
Tamba starts to sing under his breath, his concentration impaired from his caffeine shot. ‘Strange day,’ his lyrics go. ‘Strange day for a break-up. Can we wait till next week?’
I know that song. It’s from the Hedonistic Hell Crew, big on the radio before I left, hundreds of years ago. The bastard clicks his fingers. I drop the bucket at the door, turn into our living quarters. Tamba passes by the opening, sings his way to find some sweeter company. He reverses a few steps, pauses in the doorway.
‘I won’t tell them that you, like, collapsed. But you’d better pull yourself together, dude. I’m not into lying for you. I want to finish this job and get off this ship. Please.’ Tamba hangs off the door frame, swings away. I think I hear his fingers clicking further down the passage.
Emotionally strange, the two of us. A strange day for a break-up.
But it can’t wait till next week.
* * *
I can’t see myself properly in the bathroom mirror. My outline is indistinct. The details of my face have run like watercolours. I point my
