Читать книгу Thirteen Cents - K. Sello Duiker - Страница 7

5

The last couple of days have been difficult. I can’t get a trick. No money means I can’t see Allen and I can’t go anywhere near the bridge. I walk around Sea Point nervously, keeping an eye out for Gerald’s white Grenada. And I can’t go to the bank because the bank has rules. Joyce said you can only take out your money on special days, not on weekends and you must give them a reason why you need the money, exactly like gangsters work. These clever gangsters that wear Italian suits, they are full of kak. Grown-ups are the same everywhere. They always want to control everything. All I want is a decent pair of shoes, to make up with Gerald and a Malawi stop to make me think I’m flying. Is that so much to ask for?

“Hei!” Bafana jumps at me from nowhere. I’m sitting near the Men’s toilet at the beach.

“Fuck off!” I yell, holding my heart with my teeth. He laughs but stops when he sees how serious I am.

“I got a surprise for you.”

“What are you talking about? Since when do you give me anything?”

“Just go with me, bra. I know what I’m doing.”

“Look, I’m tired. I’m not walking to town and the sun is about to go down. Just leave me alone. I’ve got enough to worry about.”

“I promise, bra. We’re not going far. Just further up the beach. Sunset Beach, that’s where we’re going. It’s not far.”

“What is this about, first? I’m not getting in trouble with cops for you.”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Then what?”

“Just come with me, bra. I’m asking you nicely.”

I get up reluctantly and follow him to Sunset Beach. He introduces me to two white kids who look older than us and have long noses. They look rich and bored with their money.

“Ja, so what do you want?” I say to the taller one.

“Aggression. Cool. I can get into that totally, man.”

“Bra, don’t speak to them like that. They’re my friends.”

“Shut up, Bafana. These are not your friends. Look at how you’re dressed and look at how they’re dressed.”

“You two are cool, man. You know what I mean? Urban culture. Like urban living. You guys are living the concrete jungle, scavenging. Fuck, you don’t need our help. Fuck, that would be an insult. You guys are like cats, urban cats. Survivors, man.”

Bafana grins and nods his head while I listen to them. I make little sense of what they’re saying.

“Yeah, so we were kind of trying to tap into your pool of experience. Like we were wondering if you guys would be interested to trip with us.”

“We’ve got good acid,” the other says, “and we’ll like feed you for the evening but it must be like a totally outdoor experience. Like we were wondering if you would take us to all of your hang-out spots at night. You know, to get the whole experience unedited.”

“What are you saying? You want me to take drugs with you?”

“I’m in,” Bafana butts in.

“Shuddup you,” I tell him.

“Okay, you guys have got this aggression thing completely going. Is that like your way, like that survival of the fittest thing? Okay, I can see that. I can tap into that if you want.”

“Look, I’m not taking drugs with you,” I tell them.

“But this is going to be a totally awesome experience. Like don’t you wanna tap into some raw energy? I mean, just think of it. Think of us making art, man. Right here right now,” the shorter one says.

“What are you talking about? I’m hungry. I don’t want to talk kak with you.”

“Bra, they said they’ll feed us,” Bafana says.

“And then what?” I ask them.

“And then we’ll have a totally awesome trip.”

I start walking towards the park. Bafana comes after me.

“Fuck off, you poes. Your naai. If you want to take drugs fuck off,” I say and curl my fist at him.

He lets me go. I hear him mumbling with the other two something about another guy Bafana knows about. They walk towards the Seven Eleven where the lights are always on.

I walk towards the Broken Bath, my strops making flapping sounds that irritate me. I take them off and put them in my jacket pocket. I walk on the beach and feel broken shells under my feet. They make a crackling sound which makes me sad. I hate sadness because it means tears are not far off. And I can’t have that. Men don’t cry. When have I ever seen Allen cry? Never. Or Gerald? Never. Or Sealy? And since I’m nearly thirteen I mustn’t cry. I must be strong. I must be a man. That is what men do. They don’t cry because tears are messy. They make your eyes all puffy and snot just runs from your nose and that’s messy. Grown-ups aren’t messy. They are always neat. They are neat because they don’t cry. When does anyone see a grown-up walking in the street crying? Never. Even my father never cried. And my mother, she never cried. Her tears were her blood. She cried only when Papa beat her until she bled.

My stomach moans something awful as I walk along the beach. I go to the bins and have a scratch around. There is nothing but empty packets and drops of cool drink left in tins. Two men who look like hobos watch me closely as I scratch near their bin. They are drinking something.

“Hungry?” one of them says.

I go up to them. Sitting in the shadow of a spotlight the one stands up to shake my hand.

“What’s your name?”

“Azure.”

“Sit down.”

I sit next to them but not on their blanket.

“Have a drink,” the other offers me a half-empty two-litre bottle of cheap wine. I take a slug.

“Here, sit against the wall. It’s still warm from the sun. It was hot today, huh?”

“Ja, it was hot.”

We drink like that for a while. The other’s stomach also moans. He coughs and spits out a blob of green from his throat. It’s obvious that they also have no bread. But I sit with them even though I don’t drink much wine. White wine or any wine for that matter always makes my head spin.

“Don’t drink much, do you?” the one who asked me over says. “By the way I’m David and this is Pieter.”

I can hear that they’re both Afrikaans but I don’t attempt to speak their language. That’s how grown-ups fuck you. If you’re too eager to please, to say hi and make a friend they think you’re a moegoe and take you for a ride.

“It’s going to be warm tonight,” I offer.

“We’ll sleep well,” Pieter says.

“Not if you snore,” David says.

“Ag, los my uit, man. Ek is moeg.”

“Praat jy Afrikaans?” Pieter asks.

I shake my head.

“Engelsman, nè?”

“Sotho,” I say.

“Joburg,” David says.

“Ja.”

“I thought so. You don’t find many Sotho mense in Cape Town. All the darkies speak Xhosa here.”

A huge wave comes crashing on the rocks. We keep quiet and drink the wine.

“You don’t drink much,” he says again. I take a large sip.

“I get a headache if I drink too much.”

“Babelas,” Pieter says and laughs. He ends up coughing again and spits out another big blob of green.

“David, ek kan nie meer drink nie. My maag is seer, man.”

Me and David polish off the bottle.

“Is jy honger?” he asks after a while.

I shake my head.

“Is jy dronk?”

I nod and burp.

“Jy’s ôraait nou. Ek is ook van daai kant. Daai Vaalie mense, ek verstaan hulle nie.”

I get up and stumble.

“Stadig, ou kêrel,” David says.

I open my pants and take a piss in the spotlight. The light makes my eyes strain. I piss for a long time and sigh with relief.

“Nothing like a good piss,” David says when I’m done.

I drop next to him on the sand, my head spinning with wine.

“Waar’s jou skoene?”

I take out my strops from my jacket.

“Daai’s nie skoene nie,” he says flatly.

“I lost them,” I say and put them carefully in my jacket.

“Where?” he yawns.

“In town.”

Pieter is already sleeping. David curls up next to him. I doze off for a while sitting next to them. Not long after dozing off I get up. I stumble to the edge of the water and open my mouth. Brown stuff pours out my mouth like a fountain. I puke till I squeeze my stomach into a pea. Then I take a sip of seawater from another place and rinse my mouth. My hunger soon returns but it is late and I’m tired. Too tired to walk back to my sleeping place. So I get up the stairs leading to a pathway for people. They have a fancy name for it in English but I forget it. It’s a word that I learned in school once. I walk towards the drinking hole near the Men’s toilet. I don’t want to wake up with a babelas so I drink lots of water. It fills my stomach but doesn’t take away the hunger. My back stiff, I walk back to the swimming pool.

A few cars run down Main Road. It is late. People are sleeping. My breath stinks. I want to take another piss but hold it in. It’s not much further to go to where I sleep. The air is a little misty. I go down Broken Bath and walk towards the corner near the swimming pool. The shells are ruthless on my soles. But my feet are hard. They don’t tear or bleed easily. I take a long piss near a bush. Bafana is nowhere in sight. He’s probably frying his brain.

I curl up on clear plastic which I hide near a bush. I cover my head and face with my large oversized jacket and sleep like a rock.