‘Geez, Meirong. Why don’t you rub it in?’ Tamba gets up from the table, singles me out with a sympathetic glance. ‘See you now, buddy.’
Is this what a strange crow’s croak can win? Loyalty?
I swallow a final egg like it is the rubber front of my sneaker. One more yolk for the road.
* * *
By the time I reach the hall I am panting with terror. I stick my fingernail into the seam of the ear clip.
I will never again be the boy I was yesterday. But I would rather be Josiah, scratching my arse.
I pin the memory chip between my fore and middle finger, lock it in the crease. Tiny, this explosive, about to blow up the silence I have cowered inside my whole adult life. No blank façade, no turning the other cheek, no clever plastic-wrapping ten thousand units per second can save me from this. I raise the key card from my heart. Shove the door open.
* * *
Their eyes torch the air like they’re wolves at night, waiting to savage my soft underbelly. I want to drop to my knees, crawl towards their eighty eyes, say, Please take my truth from me.
Take my father, trying to shut me up.
Take Erniel with no sisters. None. They were gunned down within an hour of him bleeding out.
Take Araba’s breasts. Her remaining nipple was like pinched, soft lips. A kiss.
I try to stop my legs from quavering but the ligaments, the tendons around my knees have all turned to weak tea.
God in heaven, hold me up. Please.
The prayer works.
God has not heard my whole story yet. In a few minutes, he will leave me in a dilapidated heap, cross me off his list of holy children, but for now some unseen force lets me collect my cutting tools and walk straight towards Josiah’s eyes, driving their greasy drill-bits into me. I swing from him at the last instant, face Samuel, the journalist.
‘We were wondering if you were going to come. After yesterday.’
What the heck has happened to his fury?
This time, Samuel is watching my hands, his eyes hunting for the audio chip. I glance up. Tamba is peering through his window straight at me. Another wolf in the night, ready to sink his teeth into the back of my neck. He looks away, suddenly self-conscious about his authority. He rolls his chair sideways, swipes at something on a screen. Good. Let him sneak his surveillance. Hide and seek is the game we will play.
Samuel is actually wriggling his fingers in the leather glove. ‘Malachi?’
I make a smooth pickpocketing switch. Samuel draws his hands back carefully, my whole truth hidden in the web between his fingers. He steers my bomb towards his ear. I shove my hand into my pocket, press the manual switch.
It’s party time. Let’s play.
My heart begins to buck like a panic-stricken beast. A sob rises in me. I clip Samuel’s toes through fat, frightened tears. The journalist sits very still, listens in utter silence to William, my American ventriloquist. The subtle lines on the edges of his eyes sweep up, make him seem feminine. He bites on his lips. I wait for Samuel’s eyes to catch alight with a raging abhorrence. But his face only softens.
I wipe my tears on the sleeve of my purple shirt, glance up at the glass. Eighty eyes turn upwards, track the predator. Tamba’s face is still turned away.
Samuel takes the clip from his ear. His eyes hold one thing. A lion’s compassion.
‘What do you want me to do with it?’ He withdraws his feet, presses them together, toe bone to toe bone. ‘Do you want me to tell it?’
My chin falls to my chest. My spinal cord pulls a groan up from my throat.
Samuel frowns. ‘Yes?’
I nod three times. My father would have said thrice.
Samuel pulls his lion gaze from me. Every one of my muscles is now the strength of Five Roses tea. My bladder twangs like a guitar string, not from the sounds of guns and war, but from the quantum truth that is about to blast me to pieces.
This is not a party. This is my second death.
Samuel presses the audio chip between his palms. He speaks like Jesus on the mount, without an amplifier:
‘While Malachi’s father read the poem about the king’s mistress, a guerrilla lifted Araba’s skirt with his bayonet . . .’
His words, my words keep me moving.
‘His blade made a shallow cut . . .’
Eulalie’s ancient face threatens to come loose from its skeleton. Her breasts reach down her wrinkled belly. There is something shame-faced about her downward-looking nipples. I get to work clipping, but my heavy, heavy heart is too lightly hooked behind my ribs. If it falls to the floor, this is good, for I will be truly dead and not have to listen to Samuel.
‘The words burst from his mouth. Yes! They are here!’ Samuel chokes. ‘They were a suicide bomber’s trigger.’
I wait for Samuel’s hatred, but I hear only one emotion soaking his words, my words. Samuel is sad.
‘They shot the clothes off Araba’s body . . .’ He stops, rasps through the smoke fumes in his memory. ‘Her braids hung over her face.’
‘Shame, Malachi,’ Vicki whispers.
Shame in South African, which means I pity you? Or shame on you, you murderer in party purple, you demon on two legs?
Samuel chokes, ‘He killed them all with his loquaciousness.’ He bows his head, keeps his hands pressed together as though asking for consideration from God.
As if he is me.
I no longer exist. I have no hatred, no love. Nothing.
‘You had no time to think. It happened too quickly.’ Samuel pulls his knees to his chest, hugs them tightly. ‘I had three weeks.’ He shakes his head, stares at his history. ‘My camera gave them courage. I should never have filmed those people.’ He cradles his head between his elbows. ‘But my father always said, “When will I see your work on AAC?”’ Samuel rocks like a
