Читать книгу The Road of Excess - Ingrid Winterbach - Страница 6

On a Sunday morning in the middle of June, exactly seventeen days after Knuvelder’s visit to his studio, Aaron finds himself reading a newspaper interview featuring the selfsame Eddie Knuvelder. In the interview, Eddie talks about his Berlin exhibition to be held in the coming year. He mentions the names of certain promising and important artists whose work he is considering for the exhibition. Aaron Adendorff’s name is not among them.

As he reads, blood drains from Aaron’s face. So this is how it is, then, he thinks, may the pig burn in hell.

The interview includes a large picture of a smiling Knuvelder, with those fucking Eskimo chops of his. May damnation descend upon his head. The picture was taken at a recent opening at Knuvelder’s gallery, a solo exhibition by one Jimmy Harris. In the picture, Knuvelder’s two assistants, Mr X and Mr Y, stand on either side of him. Aspirant curators, curators in training. Possible heirs to the throne. The three of them stand there, like Pope Paul III with his two fawning nephews flanking him on both sides.

He should have known. He should have realised that Knuvelder’s behaviour during the studio visit was pointing to something like this.

Still, it feels as if someone has winded him.

Must his face now be rubbed in the dirt, too? Eat shit!

And this on such a low, miserable day in the middle of June.

Later in the afternoon, there’s a knock on the door.

It’s the woman from next door. Her sense of timing is spot-on – she’s probably the last person on earth he wants to see right now.

“Greetings!” she says, with one hand held high. “Greetings in all the languages of the rainbow!”

“What?” he counters.

“What’s up with you – you look like you’ve just stared straight up your grandmother’s arse,” she says.

“I’ve had bad news,” he says curtly.

“Death in the family?” she asks, lighting a cigarette.

“Worse,” he replies. “Betrayal and backstabbing of the worst kind.” (He has to pour his heart out to someone, after all. A bloody disgrace. The damnable miscreant, the flagrant …)

“Bad luck,” she says. “Can I come in for a second?”

“No,” he says.

“I just want to borrow a cup of flour, man,” she adds. “Violet’s making pancakes.”

Every few seconds, she flashes a glance over her shoulder.

“Are you on the run or something?”

“Not on your life,” she calls out, as if aggrieved by the very accusation, but she doesn’t allow this to hold her back. She brushes past him roughly. Once in the kitchen, she sits down at the table and lights up. Every now and again she steals a glance out the window, looking up at the top of the stairs.

“I mean no harm,” she says. “Peace. Vrede. Ukuthula. How about a nice neighbourly cup of coffee?”

His hair’s almost standing on end from sheer irritation. “Don’t smoke in my house,” he says. “And you should especially not smoke if you’ve got asthma.”

“Sorry, man, sorry,” she says, stubbing the cigarette out in the sink.

Unwillingly, he makes her a cup of coffee, hardly even hearing what more the woman has to say for herself.

He’s almost certain those two assistant curators had something to do with Knuvelder’s choice of artists for the Berlin exhibition. Ever since he appointed them a few years ago, Aaron’s felt he couldn’t trust those pushy buggers. Both of them visually illiterate, he thinks; in fact, they’re visually ineducable. Always so excited about anything that might be so-called avant-garde; if you can call it “cutting edge”, then it has to be good. Not that those two myopics would know real avant-garde if it smacked them in the face. Idiots. And Knuvelder’s a whore, though he’s always had a good eye. If only he’d use it. If only he’d stop letting those two pimps whisper bullshit in his ear.

“Who is this person?” she asks him.

“What person?” he asks.

“The one who’s backstabbing you and so on.”

He fetches the newspaper. Lays it open before her; taps loudly on the picture with his fingernail.

She stares at it, long and hard.

“Looks like a big-time prankster to me,” she says. “Do you want me to take him out for you?”

“Take him out?” he says.

“Man,” she says. “Take out, like remove from the scene.”

He laughs, a bitter little laugh. “If only it were that easy.”

“It is! No problem. Easy as pie.”

He stares at her. Where’s this woman crawled out from?

“You must be joking,” he says.

“Or should we just teach him a little lesson?”

“And how would you do that?” he asks caustically.

“Abduct him. Take him for a little ride. Make him get out. Smash his knees with a steel pipe. Leave him there. Let him find his own way home.”

“Jesus H Christ,” he says.

“This coffee’s A1,” she says. “A-fucking-1.”

Prankster, Aaron thinks, after she’s left. Sounds more like a description of Bubbles Bothma than of Eddie Knuvelder. In which case he’d better keep his guard well up.

*

His heart brims with thoughts of murder. His damaged kidney hurts. That would be his body sending out emergency signals. (A good time to listen to those tapes, maybe?) He whets his teeth, his brushes, like knives. Knuvelder will pay for this. But what can he do? Nothing. Maybe Knuvelder will change his mind. A capricious man. Obstinate. Maybe he’ll come to his senses. There’s still time. In previous years, Aaron would work right through the night. Stumble up the stairs the next morning in a daze. Stare at what he’d done the previous night. If it was no good, he’d destroy it. Start again from scratch. Now he works regular hours. Now that Naomi’s dead. Following the situation with his illness. Maybe this is what Knuvelder thinks he picked up in Aaron’s work – a whiff of disease, of downfall. God help Aaron if that’s the case, because then everything’s lost. But that’s not really the way things are. If Knuvelder would only look, if he would just open his eyes! If his head wasn’t so full of shit and his healthy judgement not eaten away by an insidious worm and obsequious lackey, he’d see that after all these months, things are starting to happen again in Aaron Adendorff’s work. A reminder of the old battle, the recalcitrance, the conflict and the crazy humour; traces of all this have returned, but in a new form, fiercer now. More forceful, more unerring than ever before. More uncompromising. His imagery by turns humorous, banal, apocalyptic. Brick walls and tumbling, hacked-off limbs. A head rolling like a rock down a slope. But Knuvelder, Knuvelder chooses not to see any of this.

Tell me, Eddie Knuvelder, he thinks, tell me, with your hand on the Bible – or on whatever it is you regard as holy – tell me this new work of mine isn’t gripping. Tell me it’s not good. Really good. Tell me something isn’t happening here, something as new as anything you could ever hope for.

*

Aaron’s first thought the next day is that he should never have allowed the woman into his house. Now that she’s been inside once, he must make sure she never again gets any further than the kitchen.

His second thought concerns Knuvelder. Knuvelder’s clearly sold out. No longer uses his own judgement. Instead, he lets those two assistant curators talk all kinds of shit into his head. (The one thin, white and pale – a case of bulimia, without a doubt – and the other dark, sluggish, overweight, with dreadlocks. Tweedledum and Tweedledee.) Knuvelder’s head’s going soft. His better judgement gnawed away by the worm of political correctness. But maybe all is not lost yet. Maybe Knuvelder’s busy positioning himself favourably in relation to international trends. (The man has a strong self-serving instinct.) An unpredictable bastard. He’s come up with unexpected moves before. Maybe there’s still hope. Maybe he’s deliberately pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, making an apparent choice, only to come up with something quite different, and quite surprising, in the end.

It’s still early in the morning when Mrs Sekete phones to say the taxis are on strike; she won’t be able to make it to work today. Better, he thinks, better that she’s not here on this day. Better not to have her around: steaming, singing, muttering, slamming doors, dragging furniture across the floor as she sweeps. The milk is sour. His heart beats uneasily.

Against his better judgement, he takes a second look at the list of names Knuvelder mentions in the interview. Only two of them established figures. The rest are all young artists – one of them, he notices to his dismay, is Jimmy Harris, the artist at whose solo exhibition the picture of Knuvelder was taken. He’s familiar with the work of another, Moeketsi Mosekedi. Aaron knows the woman mentioned, as an insolent tart: a smug, pseudo-intellectual poseur who produces horrifically pretentious work. He can’t bear even to think about it. Maybe Knuvelder’s got something going with her? Something sexual? But he’s always thought of Knuvelder as asexual – if Eddie had to choose between sex and financial gain, Aaron thinks, he wouldn’t hesitate for a second.

At eleven o’clock, someone knocks on the door. With a sinking feeling, he realises it’s the neighbour again. For a moment, he considers not opening the door for her.

“Ag, man,” she says, cigarette in one hand, a small plate in the other, “I thought I’d quickly bring you a pancake. You looked so down in the mouth yesterday.”

No further than the kitchen. So he has resolved.

She proceeds to sit at the kitchen table. Removes the little cloth from the pancake. It doesn’t look promising. A greenish sheen rises from its surface.

“How about another nice cup of coffee,” she says.

He doesn’t answer.

“Why do you still look so hangdog,” she says, “as if the shadow of death has just passed over you.”

“It has,” he says.

“You check out the Lotto on Saturday night?” she asks.

“No,” he says.

“What if you won?” she asks.

“I didn’t,” he replies.

“How do you know for sure?”

“I just know.”

“We had three digits right,” she says.

“How exciting,” he says.

“My offer still stands,” she reassures him. “Just say the word. We can arrange for someone to take that prankster out. Or maybe teach him a lesson.”

“I won’t be making use of your services, thank you,” he says.

“Oh, well,” she quips. “You know where to find me.”

On the other side of the valley, a dog barks in a high-pitched, hysterical voice. Apart from that, all is quiet. It couldn’t possibly have been Knuvelder’s own choice; he must have allowed himself to be swayed by those two arrogant heirs. Insinuating fucking jackals. Otherwise, the man must be suffering from some unidentified affliction, something slowly eating away at his good judgement.

“Where’s the newspaper?” the woman asks.

“Which newspaper?”

“The one you showed me yesterday.”

He hesitates a moment before fetching it.

She looks long and hard at the photo of Knuvelder. “I know this man,” she says. “I’ve met him somewhere before.”

“Where the hell would you have met him?” he asks.

“Man,” she says. “I’ve been around.”

She folds the newspaper up firmly. “I don’t read newspapers any more,” she says. “All I read is human interest. Like the night they eventually cornered the old paedophile Gert van Rooyen. He still managed to shoot their tyres to smithereens. The policeman ran all the way to Gert’s car in the driveway. Gert opened his window. Pulled out his revolver. The policeman thought Gert was going to shoot him, but the next moment Gert pushed Joey Haarhoff’s face down onto his lap and shot her in the back of the head. Then he took one last look at the policeman’s eyes before turning away and shooting himself, also in the back of the head. In front of the policeman. All over before you could say Doris Day. Old Joey still breathing, but she died on the way to hospital. The end of Gert and Joey. The secret of the girls went into the grave with them. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.”

She lights up.

“Old Joey still wrote, in her last letter to her sister, that she must forgive Gert. He was a good man. They didn’t know anything about abducted children. In the letter she even made a list of all her possessions. Who must get what after her death. That was the suicide note. But before she could even put her plan into action, old Gert pots her a shot in the back of the head, right there in the car.”

“Your chest doesn’t sound too good,” he says. “Why do you smoke?”

“Horses for courses,” she says. “Never smoked yourself?”

“Stopped,” he says.

“Doctor’s orders?”

“Yes. Kidney tumour.”

“Ag,” she says. “Bad luck.” She stares straight at his face for a moment. In those few seconds, Aaron becomes intensely aware that she has noted something about him. She’s registered his faintheartedness.

“Have you listened to the tapes yet?” she asks.

“No,” he says. “Why’re you so keen for me to listen to them?”

“No special reason,” she says. “Take it or leave it.”

After she’s left, he considers listening to the tapes (self-help for souls in distress), but decides against it. For now, his heart feels like murder and his soul like a frog under a stone in a pool of mud; the only false voice he needs to identify is that of Eddie Knuvelder.

*

Against his better judgement, he accepts an invitation on Wednesday night to go out with Bubbles and Violet for a drink. Could they please drive with him one last time? Their car should be ready by the end of the week. Well, okay. Why not? Even if they are indeed bullshitting him to hell and back. But only on one condition, then, he says to Bubbles. Leave your gun behind. Shake me down, she says. Ask Violet, I’m not lying. No monkey business. Just a drink. And so off they go. The sky’s low and threatening.

The Red Dolphin consists of a single large space, the bar counter at the left of the entrance, with small tables on the right and a TV set high up in one of the corners. It’s dusky inside. Tonight, the place is only half-full. They sit down at one of the tables. A mood of infinite desolation seizes Aaron. He should never have agreed to come along. Bubbles drinks a beer and Violet a beer shandy. Aaron has a non-alcoholic beverage. He thinks: May Eddie Knuvelder meet his Moses. May his bones be cursed. Bastard. Traitor. Bubbles plays a game of darts. Violet becomes jolly, starts giggling, and launches into conversation with other clients in the pub. Aaron makes no attempt to speak to anyone.

Before too long, he realises he’s had enough. Violet’s visibly disappointed. Bubbles asks if they can quickly drive downtown, she knows a nice little place there. Spunky barmaids. Portuguese. Long dark hair, with big pink lips. Just what the doctor ordered, she says to Aaron, playfully pushing his shoulder. I’m sorry, says Aaron. I’m not in the mood tonight for girls with big pink lips. Oh, well, says Bubbles. She stares hard at him for a few moments with those two odd-sized eyes of hers. It’s that man from the gallery, isn’t it, she says. Aaron doesn’t answer. My offer still stands, she says. Teach him a lesson. Then all your problems will be solved. No, he says, they won’t. The situation is a hundred times more complex than she, with her mafia-methods, could ever imagine. Try me, says Bubbles, stomping her cigarette out with her shoe.

Outside she sees a WANTED sign on the window. Rapist: last seen in the vicinity of Lower Umbilo. Fuzzy picture of a man with a moustache. She could put her head on a block she’s seen him somewhere before, says Bubbles. She thinks she knows where she can find him. Tomorrow, or maybe even tonight, still. Out of the question, says Aaron, he must get home. There are things he needs to attend to, urgently. (His life.) Then we’ll drag him out of his hole tomorrow, she says, the rotter. Does Aaron want to come along? No, Bubbles, he says, neither tonight, nor tomorrow, nor any other day. He’s never yet felt a calling to drag rapists out of their holes. If she wants to go searching for rapists, she must wait until her car’s been serviced and sally forth into the holes of the city or Lower Umbilo or wherever, on her own. He has work to do, he says. (Canvases to stretch. Paintings to make. Which he’ll sell off to whom, now that Eddie Knuvelder seems to have dropped him? Crook. Traitor. May he live to regret this bitterly.) Bubbles looks a little crestfallen. And even if he didn’t have work to do, says Aaron, he prefers to spend his time in other ways. (What does he have apart from his work, now that Naomi has left him behind?) And does she always take the law into her own hands like this, or does she by any chance work for the police, he asks. She flicks her stompie away. Bad luck, she says, we could’ve had some fun. He’d rather put his neck in a noose for fun, he says. In a hangman’s noose. You must be careful, Bubbles says, it’s not as easy as it looks. The rope must have the right kind of knot. The stool must be kicked away at exactly the right moment. She can always help him, if he needs help. He meets her gaze – squarely they stare into each other’s eyes. Hers without a trace of irony; she doesn’t bat an eyelid as she makes this comment. All the way home, Violet giggles in the back seat. Now the two of them must just sing “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth”. Then he’ll have heard everything.