MONDAY
The seals are as playful as the kids in an unmapped neighbourhood,
burning tyres by the side of the road. After you’ve shot the fish you
work fast. You’ve missed the spine and the fish is struggling,
flapping up a cloud of blood, so you slide the blade into its brain,
just behind the eye, then you wiggle the blade, just incase you missed
the brain. Then you string it to the buoy; a metal spike goes in
through the mouth, out through the gills. Then you get away from the
buoy. Load the gun.
You feel so goddamned proud of the fish you’ve shot, you’re beaming
like a bride, oblivious to how ridiculous you look – wet frogman, legs
wide apart on the rocks, chest pushed out like a caveman’s after a
hunt or a rape, smelling of fish guts and sweat.
Then you get shot down. A jealous little squeak of a man in a
camouflaged wetsuit tells you this is a marine reserve. His voice
tells you this is a marine reserve. His attitude tells you this is his
ocean. You tell him, no, you just spoke to nature conservation, and
they said that this is the spot. He insults you, calls you a liar,
calls you a poacher, calls you the decimater of the entire Red Roman
population of False Bay. He tells you that he phoned nature
conservation, that you better return the fish to the sea. You remind
him that the fish are dead. He commands you to return the fish to the
sea. You ask him whether fish indulge in necrophilia. He tells you
that you know nothing, he tells you that he is a professional
spearfisher, he tells you that if he ever sees you here again…
Fucking water bouncer. You walk away. You watch him from the top of
the hill, doing pathetic little duck dives on the shallow, sandy side
of the big rock. You notice his speargun in the back of his car.
Fucking jealous little faggot. You realise he was irate because he
wanted to shoot, and now there’s blood in the water, so you slide the
blade into the tyre, just above the tread, then you wiggle the blade,
just incase he’s got a patch big enough. Then you move on to another
tyre, just incase he’s got a spare. Then you go home, stuff the fish
with lemon, garlic and ginger, wrap it in vine leaves, and put it on
the fire.
TUESDAY
I found a woman in my house today.
I took the dogs for a walk and left the gate open so that the builders
can come and go as their occupation demands. She must have invited
herself in, she with a baby on her back and a boy in school uniform by
her side, holding her hand, this foreign faced woman with the stuffed
green handbag. She’s oblivious to the distinction between public and
private, because in her country there’s no distinction between public
and private, there’s only jealousy and spite, and absolute equality.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?”
“I’m fetching him from school…” she refers to the boy, the one she
uses to beg with.
“Get the fuck out.”
“They’re hitting him at school…”
“Fuck you! Get out!”
“I fetched him…”
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” I ask the boy, the one that
should be in school.
“He’s deaf and dumb…” she says.
“I don’t care. Fuck off.”
They walk away. The deaf and dumb boy looks back at me. His face like
a big question mark, so innocent and so pretty you want to make a hole
in it.
I ask the builders whether they’ve seen the woman entering the yard.
No, they say, they haven’t. Then I notice that my cell phone is
missing.
I grab the speargun and run outside. I shoot her in the face.
I run around the block. I shoot her in the stomach.
I run to the train station. I grab the handbag. She grabs the other
end of it. I let go and raise the gun. She drops the handbag. I take
it, make a list of everything in it, put it up on the notice board at
Spar: Stolen Items Found By Your Hero Ruan.
I run to the taxi rank. I shoot her as she climbs inside. I shoot her
through the baby on her back.
I run around the school. She’s gone.
WEDNESDAY
The builders are making a hell of a racket, as builders do, but I’ve
become accustomed to it. Even the dogs, look, they’re sleeping. Then
there’s a new sound, a repetitive thud, which hurts me in a part of my
body that is not mapped.
I go outside.
The thud that hurts is the sound of a black man with an axe, hitting
the roots of a tree.
I asked them not to harm the trees. But there he is, squatting, moving
the axe over his right shoulder, bringing it down with a thud on the
roots. Repetitively.
The axe follows a trajectory of hatred – it’s in his face, and in the
associations I make.
I imagine putting a spear in his belly.
I imagine his face: contorted by pain into a big question mark. O, the
blood and the guts, and the fucking justice of it.
I imagine telling him to stop.
Instead, I go to my room.
This is the room where my girlfriend sleeps. Look, she’s sleeping. The
door is open so that the breeze can come and go as its occupation
demands. The breeze is suburban by nature, and with it comes the smell
of rotting guavas from the tree in our front garden, the smell of
bergie stool, and diesel, and festering muck from the garbage bag the
garbage collectors didn’t collect, the slimy effluent left by maggots
in their dark onward orchestrations. And with the breeze comes the
voice of a child, up and down the street, calling a name,
monotonously, the name of a cat that’s missing, comes the sound of a
gate opening and closing on rusted hinges from the quiet house across
the street, the sound of a TV inside, and a parakeet, and the sound of
a dog bothered by flies, and a car that struggles to make a U-turn in
the cul-de-sac, and the racket of the builders, the plank and the
plonk and the plunk and the plink of planks being moved into place,
and the sound of a train pulling away, and the voices of the builders,
foreign tongues, and the groans my girlfriend makes in her sleep,
stretching her legs, her body making space for the baby.
And I wonder how it is possible: such tranquility in such a din.
How is it possible that through the infinite darkness of the heavens,
and through the clouds of winter, and through the glare of the city
lights, and through the smoke of burning tyres… how is it possible
that a star fell in my girlfriend’s lap?
I fall asleep next to her, murmuring ineffable sounds, impossible
words: love… love… love…
