Read Online Double Negative by Ivan Vladislavic - Free Book Online

was printed. Again, he refused my offer of help with the bags. Brookes was waiting for us on the stoep, still writing, pausing between lines with his hand going up and down like a sewing-machine needle, as if he was covering the page with dots.
    We had lunch at Raul’s in Troye Street. The place was packed but Raul – the man who put the king back in kingklip – found a table for us in a corner near the bar. The atmosphere was oily and submarine. Aquarium light seeped from a tank where a little deep-sea diver, lead-soled boots sunk in drifts of gravel, opened and shut a treasure chest, over and over, spilling pieces of eight and an SOS in air bubbles. The fringes of seaweed waving in the depths were the colour of the kale in the caldo verde.
    Brookes ordered the seafood platter for two and the waiter thought he was joking. But he was deadly serious, he said in a menacing way. ‘I am deadly serious.’ And he laughed like a mad scientist. He was always famished after a long flight. Who can eat that crap? A hijacker? And now a tough assignment on top of it all. While we were waiting for the food he moulted the jacket, at last, and tucked a serviette into his shirt collar. One after the other, he took four bread rolls from the wicker basket in the middle of the table, broke them in half and ate them. The waiter cleared away everything except the piripiri sauce to make space for the plates.
    Then Brookes ate and talked and ate. He had filled up with questions again, and after a glass of wine they streamed out of him. He kept working the food into the pouches of his cheeks so that he could ask another one: Do the prawns still come from Lourenço Marques? Not Marx, mind you, Markesh. Is Frelimo maintaining the fisheries? How large are the regime’s stockpiles of foodstuffs, fuel, ammunition? Is it true that the N1 was designed for troop carriers and armoured cars like Hitler’s autobahns? Is Sasol running at full steam? Will there be another bombing? Are the Boors still in bed with the Israelis? Do they have an atom bomb? Are sanctions biting?
    Auerbach said he only knew what he read in the papers, but he would do his best to answer. While he was speaking, Brookes peeled his prawns and licked his fingers, and scratched in his notebook, which lay open on the seat of the fourth chair, pinned by an ashtray.
    Between mouthfuls, Brookes suddenly said, ‘I can’t get that woman out of my mind. What did you say to her? When we arrived, I mean.’
    Auerbach was eating prawns too. He sucked the juice out of a head while he considered this question. ‘I said I wanted to take her picture.’
    â€˜Oh, come on, don’t be coy. I’m just interested to know why she let you in.’
    â€˜She wanted her picture taken.’
    Brookes rubbed his fingertips with his thumb and drew a figure of eight on the table top. Formica with a pattern in it, almost a texture, like brawn.
    â€˜They always want their pictures taken,’ Auerbach went on. ‘Nine times out of ten. Believe me, it’s the easy part.’
    I was halfway through a sole, picking at its pale flesh, every mouthful bristling with bones. Another stupid choice. I should have had prawns too, it would have given me reason to splash butter and lemon juice, to suck at my teeth and burn the hell out of my mouth and leave a manly amount of wreckage on the plate. Instead I was sorting through this skinny fish, something a girlfriend would order. Usually prawns were too much like insects for my stomach: the piles of translucent shells and crumpled feelers reminded me of the beetle sediment that collected in the light shades in my parents’ lounge. But I would have ordered them – especially had I known Brookes would insist on paying. Expenses, expenses, shovelling the proffered cash aside with the back of his credit card.
    â€˜What are the odds of giving birth to identical triplets, I wonder,’ Brookes said.
    â€˜Must