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Authors: Damon Galgut
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Then I stand on tiptoe and kiss Stephen on the cheek, a contact as dry and light as a pressed flower. He doesn’t flinch. I go out the door and across the stoep to the grass. My car is
round the corner. As I walk towards it, my mother is there, waving her torch like a demented firefly. ‘Here,’ she hisses. ‘Here, here!’
‘Mother,’ I say. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Be careful,’ she tells me. She draws me close, holding my arm. In the shadow of the house we huddle like assassins.
‘Him,’ she says, pointing back to where Stephen stands, unmoving. ‘He’s trying to poison you.’
I kiss her too, and go to my car. I start up and drive back round the house, headlights jogging on the bumpy lawn. When I come to the gate I have to get out to open it. I leave it open behind me
and set out again on the long drive back to the city.
7
It seems our parting is to be a gentle affair. After this we do not speak on the phone every night. Stephen does call from time to time, but only to ask after David. Linda, I
think, guesses what has happened, but doesn’t let on. She fusses over me more than ever, plying me with cups of tea and asking if the business at home went well. Yes, I tell her, it all went
fine. I leave it at that. But I know even then that I can no longer remain here.
That Friday, shortly before Stephen is due to arrive, I take the plunge. I decide to tell Linda the whole story; there seems no sense in lying. She listens, enthralled, touching at her face now
and then with those bloodless nails. When I am done, she begins to cry: a single majestic tear trickles dramatically down her cheek. ‘You poor dear,’ she says, over and over, her high
thin voice scratching like an old record. ‘You can’t go. You mustn’t go. It’s he who must go, the bastard . . . bastard . . .’
Her voice sighs out. It’s odd to hear Stephen described that way: a bastard. The name strikes no chords in me. I remove Linda’s hand from my arm, I give her a tissue. My bags are
packed; time is short; my mind is made up. I thank them both.
I book in that night at a cheap hotel in town. This, the latest in the series of strange rooms to shelter me, is more depressing than any I have seen. It’s a dark cell, overshadowed by a
glass-topped wall too close outside. There is a single bed with a brown cover. The carpet is brown. The curtains are brown.
I want to cry, but can’t. Tears have become more difficult for me of late, requiring too much effort. But a crack has opened in me somewhere as I sit listlessly on the bed and stare,
unseeing, at the smoky square of the television set and the figures moving on it. The crack inside me widens. It’s the first night I’ve spent alone, utterly alone, in my life. There are
people who spend fifty years in this way. How do they keep on? How do they survive?
In the morning I phone Stephen at Linda’s flat and we agree to meet for coffee nearby. It’s been only a week since I saw him last, but I study him as someone long lost. He’s
getting old; there are lines in his skin. At his temples and in his moustache I discover small silver hairs are growing.
We talk. We agree that David must be told and Stephen undertakes to do so. There are, of course, other matters: a course of action must be decided on. I am all for putting this off, however,
till things have eased. I see no reason for haste. It is Stephen who’s in a hurry, who wants to talk about moving out of the house.
‘But why?’ I say. ‘Can’t it wait?’
‘I’m afraid it can’t.’ He sounds apologetic. ‘Gloria, you see, she doesn’t want . . .’
At the mention of her name, I feel slightly queasy. He speaks of her with warmth, as one who knows her. I rack my brains for an insight to this woman, some clue to her nature or her mind, but
can come up only with that vague external picture I first recalled. Flour and dye. I smile tightly and say, ‘Of course.’
He tells me he would like to move
Then I stand on tiptoe and kiss Stephen on the cheek, a contact as dry and light as a pressed flower. He doesn’t flinch. I go out the door and across the stoep to the grass. My car is
round the corner. As I walk towards it, my mother is there, waving her torch like a demented firefly. ‘Here,’ she hisses. ‘Here, here!’
‘Mother,’ I say. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Be careful,’ she tells me. She draws me close, holding my arm. In the shadow of the house we huddle like assassins.
‘Him,’ she says, pointing back to where Stephen stands, unmoving. ‘He’s trying to poison you.’
I kiss her too, and go to my car. I start up and drive back round the house, headlights jogging on the bumpy lawn. When I come to the gate I have to get out to open it. I leave it open behind me
and set out again on the long drive back to the city.
7
It seems our parting is to be a gentle affair. After this we do not speak on the phone every night. Stephen does call from time to time, but only to ask after David. Linda, I
think, guesses what has happened, but doesn’t let on. She fusses over me more than ever, plying me with cups of tea and asking if the business at home went well. Yes, I tell her, it all went
fine. I leave it at that. But I know even then that I can no longer remain here.
That Friday, shortly before Stephen is due to arrive, I take the plunge. I decide to tell Linda the whole story; there seems no sense in lying. She listens, enthralled, touching at her face now
and then with those bloodless nails. When I am done, she begins to cry: a single majestic tear trickles dramatically down her cheek. ‘You poor dear,’ she says, over and over, her high
thin voice scratching like an old record. ‘You can’t go. You mustn’t go. It’s he who must go, the bastard . . . bastard . . .’
Her voice sighs out. It’s odd to hear Stephen described that way: a bastard. The name strikes no chords in me. I remove Linda’s hand from my arm, I give her a tissue. My bags are
packed; time is short; my mind is made up. I thank them both.
I book in that night at a cheap hotel in town. This, the latest in the series of strange rooms to shelter me, is more depressing than any I have seen. It’s a dark cell, overshadowed by a
glass-topped wall too close outside. There is a single bed with a brown cover. The carpet is brown. The curtains are brown.
I want to cry, but can’t. Tears have become more difficult for me of late, requiring too much effort. But a crack has opened in me somewhere as I sit listlessly on the bed and stare,
unseeing, at the smoky square of the television set and the figures moving on it. The crack inside me widens. It’s the first night I’ve spent alone, utterly alone, in my life. There are
people who spend fifty years in this way. How do they keep on? How do they survive?
In the morning I phone Stephen at Linda’s flat and we agree to meet for coffee nearby. It’s been only a week since I saw him last, but I study him as someone long lost. He’s
getting old; there are lines in his skin. At his temples and in his moustache I discover small silver hairs are growing.
We talk. We agree that David must be told and Stephen undertakes to do so. There are, of course, other matters: a course of action must be decided on. I am all for putting this off, however,
till things have eased. I see no reason for haste. It is Stephen who’s in a hurry, who wants to talk about moving out of the house.
‘But why?’ I say. ‘Can’t it wait?’
‘I’m afraid it can’t.’ He sounds apologetic. ‘Gloria, you see, she doesn’t want . . .’
At the mention of her name, I feel slightly queasy. He speaks of her with warmth, as one who knows her. I rack my brains for an insight to this woman, some clue to her nature or her mind, but
can come up only with that vague external picture I first recalled. Flour and dye. I smile tightly and say, ‘Of course.’
He tells me he would like to move
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